Out from Down Under
by MlleClaudine
Summary: When Lucy met Scud... or, girls, guns and mayhem in the years leading up to the events of "D.E.B.S." Feedback as always is greatly appreciated! Updated 5/28/14.
1. Out from Down Under: Chapter 1

Lucy could not get warm. Burrowing her hands into the shearling throw, she snugged the edges more securely around herself, but still she felt numb.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see her associates exchange glances as they shifted crates and uncovered furniture. Eddie ran a hand underneath the open collar of his shirt to lift his hair off his neck and Gunther's beefy face and shaved head were flushed and shiny, but they said nothing and left her undisturbed.

_Who am I kidding?_ Lucy thought darkly. _Mood I'm in, they're probably just glad I'm not mowing them down with a nail gun._ She pinched the bridge of her nose, rubbing it. _Or offing myself. I might, as long as it meant I wouldn't hurt like this any more._

She became aware of a presence at her elbow and a curl of delicious steam that filled her nostrils.

"Scud, you're hovering." A smile tugged at her lips despite herself, and she opened her eyes to look up at her best friend.

He smiled in return as he held out to her a large mug of coffee; its top swirled thickly with cream and the scent rising from it told her that he'd added a healthy slug of Jack. "What, I can't bring someone a drink without being accused of overprotectiveness?"

"No. And before you ask again, no, I don't need a pillow, another blanket, or a nursemaid, thank you very much. But I _will_ take this," she added, liberating the heavy mug from his hand before he could move it teasingly out of reach. "Jesus, Scud," she rasped after the first sip, "did you use the whole bottle?" Her eyes watered and for a long moment it seemed that she exhaled pure whiskey fumes.

"Strictly medicinal," said her friend, watching her closely as he flopped onto the other end of the sofa. "Besides, you've got all the major food groups in there: sugar, caffeine and hooch."

"You left out chocolate." Prepared for the kick now, she sucked down a large mouthful, savoring the burn.

They sat in easy silence, idly watching the flames dance in the huge fireplace. It was an expensive indulgence here in Reykjavik, especially when the house already had geothermal heating, but her father had always emphasized the impact of conspicuous consumption. Rather like the meticulously restored classic vehicles he kept at each of his residences -– now hers alone, she had to remind herself -– a straightforward display of wealth and power sometimes sent a message that no mere words could convey.

After so much loss, she would take her comforts where she could find them.

"Hey, Luce?" said Scud quietly after -– how long? She wasn't sure.

"Yeah?"

"What's our next move?"

She sighed. "I don't know. Hang out here for a while, I guess."

His blue eyes widened. "'Hang out'? And what, knock over a museum or two? 'Cause I gotta tell you, there's not a big demand for Icelandic art, though there's a couple sculptures at the Sveinsson that would look pretty cool in the den -– "

"Scud." She found her words grinding out between clenched teeth. "We are not knocking over any museums. We are not robbing banks on Borgartún. We're not even going to drive up the price of fireworks on New Year's Eve. We're just going to... hang out."

Scud digested this for a moment. "Can't we at least corner the market on alcohol? There's like four hours of sunlight a day now, what else do these people have to do besides drink? We could make a killing -– "

"Scud!"

"Right." Another long silence, during which she massaged her temples and willed the muscles in her jaw to unknot. "Lucy?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry."

At that she looked over and thought once more that Scud had the kindest eyes of anyone she knew. Her friend, her confidant, her right hand, closer to her than her brother had ever been. And just about the only person in the world whose sympathy she could tolerate. "Thanks."

* * *

_**Five years ago...**_

"Daddy, I don't see why I have to go to business school. I'm learning everything I need to know about running the syndicate from you."

Lucy usually got her way when it came to her father but on this matter he was being uncharacteristically inflexible. He leaned forward at his desk, steepling his fingers together. "Lucinda, I've told you again and again: I need someone I can rely on absolutely, someone who knows the ins and outs of our legitimate holdings as well as our illegitimate ones. And that means having a respectable face with impeccable credentials."

"So make Frankie go. At least he's been to college."

Her father's mouth tightened. "Your brother... doesn't have your aptitude."

That was certainly euphemistic. Frank Jr. was a chronic underachiever. His only talent appeared to be using his family connections to finance his hobbies, which consisted mainly of chasing girls, opening nightclubs, and losing money on both. Even a number of quietly sizeable donations and the establishment of a scholarship hadn't been enough to keep Chico State from expelling him halfway through his sophomore year.

She tried another angle. "Daddy, I'm an 18-year-old high school dropout. How the hell am I even supposed to get in?"

"Ah." Her father smiled at her. "That's where our new secret weapon comes in."

Lucy frowned. This was the first she'd heard about it; she hated being left out of the loop on any decision, however small. "And that would be... ?"

"Me."

Whirling around in her chair, Lucy stared at the pale skinny boy who had been observing them without her realizing it from the corner of her father's office. He had large blue eyes, prominent in his pinched face; his jaw was smudged by what she at first thought was dirt, but on closer inspection turned out to be stubble a few shades darker than his fair, flyaway hair. She also noticed that he was wearing both suspenders and a belt.

His eyebrow quirked as he acknowledged her glance. "My philosophy in life," he said dryly. "Never get caught with your pants down. If one method fails, always have a backup."

That made her snort. "Mine too. Maybe not quite so literally as yours." She extended her hand. "Lucy Reynolds."

His face briefly registered surprise at the strength of her grip and the hard callus of her palm. His hand was much softer, but then he probably hadn't had babysitters taking him to the firing range and teaching him street fighting from the age of five. "Diamond," he said.

She blinked. "Your name is Diamond?" The ranks of her father's associates included names like "Chainsaw" and "Snake," so she supposed she shouldn't make hasty judgments, but "Diamond" was pretty much the last thing she would have expected.

"No," said her father, startling her. "Yours is."


	2. Out from Down Under: Chapter 2

The boy -– who turned out to be called Scud, no last name -– became her constant shadow, which annoyed the shit out of her. Fine, so he had created her new persona out of whole cloth: "Lucy Diamond" had a spotless record, a 4.0 with honors in International Relations from UCLA and a 740 on the GMAT. She had a driver's license, a passport, a Social Security card and a birth certificate. There were even credit cards with realistic limits, though of course the underground cash flow was never a problem.

Lucy had to admit that she was impressed with the quality of his work. Her own efforts at computer hacking were competent but superficial. Scud, on the other hand, could make the electrons sit up and dance -– Mozart to her Chopsticks.

It didn't make the constant drilling to internalize the minutiae of her new life any more bearable. Especially when it started at breakfast.

Scud's ever-present laptop, a slim, sleek machine he'd built that was faster and more powerful than any computer she'd ever seen, was open between them on the table. Only Lucy was eating; as usual, Scud had gotten so wrapped up in going over the details that his food sat neglected.

"So I'm supposed to have singlehandedly bailed this business out of receivership while still in college? Who the hell's going to believe that?"

"If you work the system right, just about everybody, including the IRS." He tossed her a thick sheaf of papers. "Financial records going back to the company's startup, including the details of your takeover. Minutes of all meetings. Correspondence on official letterhead for Diamond Import/Export." As she might have expected, Scud had gotten her signature dead-perfect.

"Which now exists?"

"Which now exists. Here's the fleet manifest -– planes, ships, trains, trucks -– and current inventory of warehouses on three continents."

"What about on their end? How do the employees know they're supposed to have been working for me for the past three years?"

"Companies go bust, get bought out and change names all the time. At the worker level, all they care about is that someone signs their paychecks. At the management level, the critical positions have been taken over by our people; they've been careful to phase out anyone who's been around too long."

But then something caught her eye and she burst out laughing. "The company's original name was Vandelay Industries? Are you kidding me?"

Scud's entire body gave the impression of recoiling even though he hadn't actually moved. "I can change it if you want," he said stiffly.

But she had seen the flash of vulnerability before his expression had shuttered closed and for once regretted her impulsive outburst. He had to have hacked into at least a hundred different high-level databases; the degree of skill it took in order to set his worms to do their work without leaving tracks was almost unimaginable. "No, you've already got all the infrastructure in place, I'll deal with it. Besides," she gave him a lopsided smile, "I never knew you had a sense of humor before."

The wide blue eyes gradually thawed. "I wasn't sure you'd even get it. Didn't think you watched television."

"I don't," she chuckled. "But Gunther does. Between jobs we sometimes watch his 'Seinfeld' or 'Friends' tapes, if we're not playing Uno or gin rummy or whatever."

Scud's brows climbed toward his hairline. "Uno?"

"There's a lot of downtime when you're doing a setup. You need something that you can pick up or put down at a moment's notice. We used to play Go Fish but it got too violent."

"Uh... "

"Never underestimate the competitive nature of a roomful of really big guys suffering from testosterone poisoning."

"I'll keep that in mind."

Just then her brother shambled into the dining room, for once out of bed before the middle of the afternoon. He slopped some scrambled eggs and bacon from the buffet onto his plate, then slouched into a seat across the table from them, rubbing at reddened eyes and sniffling noisily to clear his sinuses. "Yo, sis. Who's the geek?"

Lucy's nose wrinkled involuntarily at the fug of cigarette smoke, body odor and booze. Frankie looked and smelled as though he hadn't bathed or shaved in days. "New associate. Black hat."

"No shit." Frankie poked at the eggs with his fork, then pushed the plate away. Dumping sugar into his coffee -– far more than could possibly dissolve -– he squinted at Scud. "He any good?"

"See for yourself." From her back pocket, she pulled out the passport Scud had had made; it was starting to look authentically battered and crumpled, its appearance nearly congruous with the number of entry and exit stamps on its pages.

Frankie's lips pursed. "Not bad. Lucy Diamond, huh? That your idea or the old man's?"

"Daddy's."

"Figures he would name his little princess after his favorite song. What are you looking at, fucktard?"

Scud's face held no hint of a reaction. "Nothing," he mumbled.

"That's right," said Frankie agreeably. "Especially if you ask my dad. 'Scuse me." He stood abruptly, lurching toward the powder room down the hall, from where he could be heard loudly emptying the contents of his stomach. One of the ever-present cadre of her father's associates quickly went to his aid.

Silence loomed over the table, but after a while it became evident that Frankie wasn't likely to return any time soon. "Sorry about that," Lucy said, embarrassed. "He's not usually that bad."

"Not like you can help who you're related to," Scud shrugged. "How long has he been using?"

The mouthful of eggs lodged halfway down her throat. Eyes watering, she drank most of her glass of orange juice in a series of gulps until her coughing subsided. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and waved off Eddie, who had popped his head in through the kitchen door at the sound of her choking. "What are you talking about?"

"Don't tell me you can't see it." At her blank look, Scud shrugged one bony shoulder. "Bloodshot eyes. Runny nose. Not eating but craving sugar. Sudden puking."

Her brows swooped together. "So he's probably hung over. Doesn't mean he's doing drugs. I mean, he smokes pot, but who doesn't?"

"Probably lost a lot of weight recently, right? Let's just say I'm familiar with the signs."

"Signs of what?" Lucy leaned closer.

Scud wasn't looking at her. "Heroin. Could be doing coke, but my guess is he's been riding the white horse."

"Shit." She sat back heavily. Frankie was always moody but his behavior in the last few months had been more erratic than usual. He did seem to be thin; she really couldn't remember the last time she'd seen him eat a proper meal. Her gut instinct, and the evidence in front of her, now that she'd bothered to examine it, told her that Scud was probably right.

Something struck her. "Scud." He stiffened but lifted his gaze to meet hers. "You said... you were familiar..." Quickly she scanned his wrists and arms, but there were no visible track marks.

He shook his head. Bending, he unfastened one of his boots, then slipped off his sock.

The network of collapsed and scarred veins mottling his foot up to the ankle was grotesque. Lucy slowly let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding. "How long have you been clean?"

It was his turn to be nonplussed. "What makes you so sure I am?"

"There's no way you could have done -– " a gesture encompassed the pile of Scud's handiwork " -– all this if you were high. You're too focused, and you care too much about your results. Besides," she crooked a smile, "Daddy wouldn't have hired you."

He covered the pause by putting his sock back on and relacing his boot. "Year and a half," he said eventually. "I got clean during the six months I was in prison, stayed clean since."


	3. Out from Down Under: Chapter 3

Lucy hummed as she ran a chamois over the hood of her car, buffing off the last traces of wax and giving the coat its final polish. Usually one of the guys down in the garage took care of it, along with the other family and utility vehicles, but every once in a while she liked to get her hands on it herself.

The 1959 Coupe DeVille had been her birthday present from her father when she was fifteen. It was her pride and joy... and she had many fond memories of getting lucky in its broad back seat.

"She's a beaut," said Scud admiringly.

Lucy suppressed a flare of irritation at the sight of him angled against a nearby wall; she'd been so absorbed in what she'd been doing that she had no idea how long he'd been there.

Lately he had taken to turning up wherever she happened to be, even when they weren't working on their project. Several times she'd caught him watching her, when he didn't think she'd notice. She put it down to the fact that she was the person closest to him in age on the entire compound; it would be fairly natural for him to seek her out when he was lonely or bored.

Then, too, the rest of the guys were still uncertain about his status. Scud did spend a lot of time with either her or her father and he was quartered in the main house rather than in one of the barracks, but he wasn't family like some of the longterm associates. His undeniable talents had won their grudging admiration, though, and they liked that he hadn't tried to ingratiate himself with them or use his in with the boss to jockey for position.

He'd begun to open up more, bit by bit losing the wary defiance that had marked his first few weeks. She supposed that it wouldn't kill her to be a little more gracious to him.

Dropping the chamois in a bucket, Lucy straightened up, inviting him closer with a lift of her chin. "Come on, check her out."

Scud trailed his fingertips along the sweep of a fin and the gleaming curve of the flank. "Sweet," he said under his breath.

"My baby. Want to take her out for a spin?" She tossed him the keys, which he deftly caught, flashing her an unexpectedly unguarded grin.

Scud slid behind the wheel, waiting until she settled into the passenger seat before firing up the ignition. The huge engine answered perfectly with a growl, idling down to its bone-deep thrum.

He raised his brows. "Big-block Chevy?"

"454."

"Nice."

He put the car in gear and stepped on the gas -– then had to brake hard to avoid hitting the human mountain that had materialized in front of them.

Uh oh. She should have seen this coming.

Gunther was her favorite of her father's men; he and his boyfriend Eddie had practically raised her. He had taught her how to shoot, enormously proud that she could field-strip, clean and reassemble any handgun blindfolded by the time she was seven. He had also taken it upon himself to ensure that anyone who was with her was capable of looking out for her.

Scud swallowed. "Problem?" he called out the window.

The bald giant crossed his arms; his biceps bulged, straining his shirt. "Just making sure there isn't going to be one. Sorry, Miss Lucy, this won't take long."

"Suit yourself." She got out, letting Gunther take her place. With a screech of tires, the bass growl of the Cadillac's engine revved up to a whining snarl as it barreled down the road.

Lucy jogged to a rise where she could overlook most of the compound. The trail of dust was easy to follow; when it cleared, she caught sight of them roaring down to an empty lot.

Somehow Scud whipped the hulking car around in a 180 to head back in the direction he'd come from. She watched as he hit perfect drift angles up the S-curves, controlled the skid through a late apex turn, then breached the top of the hill, bearing down on her. Barely fifty feet away, he threw a donut and used the momentum to slingshot into an arcing lateral slide, coming to a stop between two posts without so much as kissing the paint in a space she would have sworn you couldn't park a Volkswagen in.

Gunther stumbled out, green and sweating.

"Well?" said Lucy, amused.

The big man wiped his face and forehead with a handkerchief the size of a small tablecloth. "He'll do."


	4. Out from Down Under: Chapter 4

"Where'd you learn to drive like that?"

Scud shrugged, feigning nonchalance but clearly pleased with himself. "Used to boost cars when I was a kid. Made some extra cash street racing. You need to dial in some negative camber in your suspension -– not quite enough grip in the tires on a turn."

"I'll tell the boys when we get home." Just then her cellphone rang. Slipping it from her pocket, Lucy smiled when she read the number. "Hey, babe."

_"Hey yourself, lady. You free this afternoon?"_ The deep, husky voice never failed to send a lick of heat shimmering up her spine. Not to mention to parts a little farther south.

Lucy licked her lips. Her pulse was already hammering. "What time does your wife get home?"

She nearly missed Scud's sidelong glance; when she looked back at him, he was staring straight ahead, his fingers tapping the steering wheel out of synch with the beat of the song on the radio.

_"Not till 6:00."_

A quick peek at the dashboard clock told her that she had plenty of time to get laid and still make it home to dress. "I'm there. About half an hour, okay?"

_"Hurry."_

Lucy flipped her phone closed. "Um. Hey, Scud, would you mind taking a little detour?"

He was still staring straight ahead. "Sure. Fine."

What was up with him? "Take Sepulveda south to 405, then exit at the Skirball and go left on Mulholland. I'll tell you where to turn off."

They passed the rest of the trip in silence. Scud pulled in when Lucy pointed; they waited for the immense wrought iron gate to trundle obediently aside, then rumbled up the long winding drive leading to the Italianate mansion. "I'll see you at dinner," she said through the window. "Don't forget, Daddy's got guests coming, so we dress formal."

"I'll be sure to wear my t-shirt with the fewest holes." Scud hesitated. "How are you getting back to the compound?"

"Nails and Joe Z are down by the gate. They'll take me home."

"The guys who've been shadowing us in the silver Mercedes? They're about as subtle as an elephant in a tutu."

"They're not supposed to be subtle. That's the whole point of having bodyguards."

"Whatever. Knock yourself out."

Lucy frowned slightly. Something really was bugging him. Mentally she shrugged, then loped up the stairs to the front door.

* * *

Stretching luxuriously, Lucy practically purred. Her entire body was relaxed and pleasantly sore in all the right places. The French doors leading to the balcony were open; a stray breeze licked over her heated skin, making her shiver deliciously. She stretched again and snuggled closer to the tall rangy redhead, inhaling the scents of sweat and sex.

A long arm wrapped around her. "I think you needed that," Alex said, lips pressing against the top of her head.

Lucy traced the lines of the lean belly with delicate strokes of her fingertips, delighting in the ripple of deep muscle in response to her touch. "Oh, yeah. Been way too long."

Alex shook with quiet laughter. "With me, you mean. I harbor no illusions that I'm the only toy in your playpen."

"You calling me a slut?" teased Lucy, wriggling free and playfully pinning Alex's arms to the bed.

Cat-green eyes slitted in a mock glare, then fluttered shut as she kissed each lid in turn, the thick sandy lashes tickling her lips. She smiled, dusting butterfly kisses down the straight nose, along the planes of the cheekbones, the strong angle of the jaw, and finally over the wide sensual mouth that still tasted of her.

They lost long moments in a kiss that was no less energetic and intense than their coupling had been, and it was with great reluctance -– and a renewed rush of wetness to her core -– that Lucy broke off, panting. "I'm sorry, babe, I've got to go."

"I know, I know. Time to take over the world. Or whatever it is that you do in real life," Alex added as Lucy hastily rolled to her feet.

"You know my motto: never complain, never explain."

"I got no complaints, darlin'," drawled Alex, propped up on one elbow watching Lucy search for her clothes.

"Yeah, well, if you don't get your ass out of bed soon, you might have some explaining to do when Gina gets home."

"Don't remind me," Alex groaned dramatically before following her example. They dressed quickly, then ambled together into the hall and down the wide marble stairs with the loose, rolling gait of the carnally sated.

Leaning in the open doorway, they shared a last embrace as Lucy's escort pulled up to the circular courtyard. Subconsciously she noted something odd but deliberately suppressed her instinct and training -– until Alex started to laugh.

"What?" Lucy snapped.

The redhead grinned. "Your driver must not have seen two women kissing before. Don't tell me he didn't know?"

Scud's mouth was slightly agape, his eyes nearly as round and glassy as the headlamps on the big Caddy.


	5. Out from Down Under: Chapter 5

"Don't tell me you didn't know."

Lucy found the situation -– and Scud's discomfiture -– highly amusing.

They were sitting in her favorite booth at the Junk Pit, where she'd taken him after a phone call to her father. Truthfully, she was glad to miss dinner; she was far more comfortable in the grungy confines of the bar than she was dressed to the nines and concentrating on which fork went with which course. She also wasn't sorry to avoid having to spend the evening with Melinda, her father's current inamorata, a beautiful but (in Lucy's opinion) vapid bimbo with dollar signs in her eyes.

She took a swig from her bottle of Corona. "I mean, in all your research, all your poking and prodding, you never once realized I was gay?"

Even the tips of Scud's ears were red. "Guess it didn't occur to me," he muttered, playing with a wedge of lime. "I did kind of wonder why you had such a large account with that florist."

Lucy laughed. "It's a cliché, but women do like getting flowers. Which reminds me." She punched in a number without having to look at the keypad. "Marty, it's Lucy. Delivery for Alexandra Phelan. Yeah, the usual -– no, make it irises. Right, send them to the office, not the house. Thanks."

Half a beer later, Scud cleared his throat. "So how many 'usual's are there?"

"Depends," she shrugged. "Three or four at the moment. Might pick up a girl in a club if I like her."

"Any of 'em you're particularly attached to?"

Lucy flashed back to Alex and those long, talented hands. "Maybe. Why?"

He seemed to have trouble finding words. "Might be best if you cut all ties before we go online."

"Go online - oh. You mean when 'Lucy Diamond' makes her grand entrance for real."

"You've got to stop thinking of her as a separate entity. You have to _be_ Lucy Diamond, inside out, or this'll never work."

"I know, I know. Between Daddy and you, I've done nothing but eat, sleep, shit, fart and pee Lucy Diamond for months." She chewed absently at her lower lip. "I... don't know if I can pull it off."

Scud looked sharply at her. "You having second thoughts?"

"Not exactly." She toyed with her bottle, drawing designs on the table with the droplets of condensation. "It's just... the whole legit thing, having to go to school, play by the rules... I've never been good at that."

"You've got an IQ of 168, and from what I've seen there's no question of your being smart enough. With the background I've given you, I can get you into any school you want, and then we can tap whatever resource we need to get you through it without your having to crack a book. Diamond Import/Export is a going concern that won't require any more hands-on input than you want to give it and in the meantime it's a perfect means to funnel loot. So what's the problem?"

Lucy ate a handful of popcorn. "I guess the problem is me. My whole life, I always assumed I'd work with my father, run jobs with him, then eventually take over the syndicate."

"You'll still do be doing that, just in a different way. This might also be his way of making you less of a target, to protect you."

"From the Schaffers, you mean? Oh, please," she sniffed. "Those jackasses couldn't pull off a hit on a Greyhound bus."

Scud finished his beer. Lucy caught Dante's eye at the bar and signaled with two fingers; fresh bottles were on the way to their table almost before her hand dropped. "What about Mackie?" he asked carefully.

Her face heated. "They got lucky. And he was careless."

"Yeah, stupid of him to put his spine in the way of a bullet."

"We take care of ours. No matter what." Her cousin now supervised the closed-circuit cameras in the security room.

"Not much comfort if you're in a wheelchair."

"Yeah, well, we got a little of ours back. Daddy had Johnny Schaffer shipped to his father in three separate boxes."

Their food arrived, circumventing the awkward turn in the conversation. They fell on the burgers, devouring sizzling golden brown fries and onion rings between fat juicy bites.

Coming up or air at last, Lucy sighed, licking salt from her lips and wiping grease from her fingers. "Damn, that was good." She drained her beer.

"Where'd you find the cook?"

"Hired him away from Spago." She cocked an eyebrow. "You knew I owned the place? It's not on the books."

"Give me some credit," said Scud. "No one carded us at the door, even though neither of us looks of age. Those biker dudes didn't make a peep, just vacated the table when we walked up. No one's asked you to pay for anything or even mentioned a tab. Not hard to figure out."

"You're really smart, and really observant." Lucy nibbled at a fry. "So I'll ask you again: how is it you didn't know I was gay?"

He shifted in his seat. "I figured you didn't have any guys hanging around because they'd been scared shitless -– most of your father's associates look like they'd rip the head off anyone who approached you. And besides," he mumbled something that was inaudible beneath the thumping sound system.

"What was that?"

Scud flushed and looked away. "I said, you're kinda hot."

Ah. So that was it. "Well, thanks." She smiled wickedly, not wanting to let him off the hook yet. "You don't think hot girls can be into girls?"

"I didn't say that." He squirmed. "I just assumed... "

"You learn pretty quick that it's dangerous to make assumptions."

"So I've noticed. Goddamn." Scud frowned.

"What?"

"Now I've got to go back and make sure there isn't anything else I missed."

"It can wait till tomorrow. Come on."

* * *

Lucy held onto a lungful of resiny, spicy Kali Mist, then blew it out in a long thin stream before passing the joint back to Scud, sprawled next to her on the hood of her car.

Their vantage point on the edge of Griffith Park afforded them a spectacular view of the city spread out below them, as well as of the crystalline night sky.

"Awesome," said Scud in response to nothing in particular.

"Oh, yeah." She aimed smoke at a distant plane, making the slow-moving flickering light temporarily disappear. "Gotcha."

"Huh?"

"Nothing."

The supremely harmonious buzz persisted long after they'd finished the joint. Lucy gave the roach to Scud, who put it into a small metal box he tucked away in his pocket. They leaned back against the windshield, occasionally slurping from the Kahlua milkshakes Dante had given them as they'd left the bar.

"Hey, Lucy?"

"Mmhmm?"

"When did you know you were... you know..."

"A lesbian? Queer? Gay? A dyke? A carpet muncher? A vagitarian? Batted for the home team? Spoke lesbonics? Ate at the Y?" Lucy grinned as Scud started giggling, laughing herself when she had to grab his arm to keep him from rolling off the car. _Damn good weed_, she thought cheerfully.

"I guess I kind of always knew," she said. "I mean, growing up, I was always fascinated with women. Maybe it was partly because my mom died when I was little, but even then I never thought of them in terms of looking for another mother -– I wanted to be close to them because they were _women_. In school I'd go out with friends and some boy would try to get my attention but I'd spend the whole time thinking, you know, you're fun and cool and all but I have absolutely no interest in you and, damn, Annalise has really nice hair and I want to touch her skin. Didn't take much of a leap from there."

"That mean you've never slept with a guy?"

"No, I've slept with boys, too -– lost my virginity to a boy, matter of fact, mostly out of curiosity. And sex with them was all right, just nothing special. Of course," she considered, "the fact that Gunther was usually standing outside the door might have cramped their style a little."

"I'll bet."

"And once I realized I was into girls... well, that was a whole different ballgame. Everything just felt _right_, like that was the way it was supposed to be. The way they feel in my arms, the way they smell, the way they taste when they -– "

"I get the picture." Even in the darkness she could tell Scud's face was crimson. "So," he said almost wistfully, "you and me... ?"

"Not gonna happen."

"Right."


	6. Out from Down Under: Chapter 6

Lucy was on her way to the gym one morning when Scud called out from his computer station, which had steadily grown to take over the office he'd been allocated. "Luce, take a look at this."

"What is -– holy shit." Lucy marveled at the incredibly detailed holographic projection, with its scrolling, constantly updating information. " 'Diamond Data Retrieval'?" She looked closer at one corner. "You hooked into NORAD?" she said incredulously.

"Yep," Scud said with a smug smile. He clicked through commands to bring up different screens. "Also NAVSTAR, the FBI, CIA, Interpol, you name it. Even FedEx and UPS -– you want a package diverted with no traces, no problem."

"Damn," she said, giving him a playful shove. "Scud, you rock."

"Like a lobster." Noting her workout clothes, he grimaced. "Off to get the crap beaten out of you?"

Lucy laughed. "No, today we're doing capoeira. You know, it wouldn't hurt you to join us sometimes."

Scud had reluctantly agreed to a Kel-Tec P-11. The smallest weapon that Gunther would let him carry, it had the advantages of being not only easy to conceal but also unlikely to go off accidentally if he dropped it. He'd proven to be a surprisingly good shot -– gamers, he said, had excellent hand-eye coordination -– but, as he tended to be clumsy, he'd drawn the line at hand-to-hand combat.

He'd been appalled the first time he'd seen her training with Ari, an ex-Israeli Special Forces officer who taught Krav Maga. They'd been doing knife attack drills; by the end both of them were bruised, bleeding and shaking with exhaustion.

"You consider this _fun_?" Scud had said, handing her a towel and wincing at the sight of the purpling swelling at the round of her shoulder. Ari had pulled his punch at the last second, else her arm would have been broken.

"No, I consider this necessary. I have to stay in shape, be ready for anything." She'd mopped her face, then laughed. "Okay, I _do_ consider it fun. Ari's probably pissed that I managed to disarm him and land a kick to his backside in the same session."

"Join you?" Scud shook his head. "No thanks. I'll stick to what I'm good at. This," he nodded at the hologram, "needs some fine-tuning. Oh, and check this out -– came across it this morning." Flying fingers tapped in commands; up came a real-time satellite image of what looked like a small college campus, with curiously orderly groups of girls all wearing white blouses and blue plaid skirts. Lucy leaned closer; some of those skirts were really short...

"So it's some girls' school with a dress code designed by someone with a fetish, so what?"

"Not just any school. From what I can tell, it's a relatively new paramilitary organization, sort of an experimental offshoot of several intelligence branches. They've only been up and running for a couple of years, but you wouldn't believe the amount of money that's been diverted to them. They're called the D.E.B.S."

"Cute." Lucy watched a quartet of girls trot by in those absurd outfits, then patted Scud's arm. "Nice catch. Keep an eye on them, let me know what they're up to."

"On it."


	7. Out from Down Under: Chapter 7

_Few people have the courage to take on a failing business, much less one on an international level. Not so 23-year-old __**Lucy Diamond**__, who in her junior year at UCLA used her savings as well as money loaned from family and friends to buy a controlling share of a moribund EMC. She repositioned it as an import/export business and within two years was able to repay her loans, purchase the company outright and turn a profit. Ever ambitious, Diamond plans to attend business school with an eye toward expanding her company's reach, eventually establishing a consultancy for worldwide SMEs._

_"Up till now I've been lucky. Yes, I did a hell of a lot of research but I took a lot of risks and just happened to make the right decisions at opportune moments. It's time to broaden my knowledge and learn to access more of those networks that are going to be vital to helping the company grow."_

_Spoken like a true visionary. We'll certainly be watching._

from an interview with _Entrepreneur_, November 1998

* * *

"Not bad, eh?" Lucy tossed the magazine on the dining table.

Scud glanced at the article. "Very nice. All gung-ho and venture capital-y."

They were surrounded by piles of application forms, most of them for schools they'd considered and rejected. Freed of any uncertainty or apprehension, Lucy was actually having fun with the process.

"Here's another one asking me to discuss an ethical dilemma I faced and how I dealt with it. Wonder what they'd think if I wrote, 'Once on a stakeout I realized I had the hots for the mark's wife. I set up the job so that he took the fall for his own robbery and then I seduced the wife while he was in jail. She turned out to be way too needy and demanding, so I planted evidence to get the mark exonerated and convinced her to go back to him.'"

"So your dilemma was that you couldn't keep it in your pants?"

"Very funny. No, the dilemma was that I felt really bad for the guy. No one should have to be stuck with someone that clingy."

"Yeah, well, somehow I doubt that's the answer they're looking for." Scud peered at the form, then added it to the reject pile. "I think we should focus on the international ones. Easier to fly under the radar if you're halfway across the world."

Lucy flipped through a smaller stack. "Oxford University? Are you serious?"

"It's only a one-year program, and it's new, so they'll be actively recruiting a diverse student body. Besides, it reeks of respectability and you can't beat the name recognition."

"Forget it. I'm not wearing a bathrobe for a year stuck in a moldy old place out in the middle of nowhere." Oxford went on the reject pile. "Now this is interesting."

"Which one?"

"University of Sydney." Reaching over to Scud's laptop, she activated the holographic display and brought up a map. "We've got warehouses near the airport, don't we?"

Scud entered a command; three red dots glowed along Port Botany. "Private wharf and access to the railway. What're you thinking?"

Tapping her teeth with the end of her pen, Lucy studied the screen. "I'm thinking we need to pay a visit to our diamond smuggling pipeline."

With her father's permission, she and Scud left for Sydney the next evening.


	8. Out from Down Under: Chapter 8

Flying commercial was a novelty; even in first class, the experience was nothing like traveling in one of the family's private jets.

Being treated like cattle -– well-heeled cattle, true, but cattle nonetheless -– was bad enough, but Scud's childlike glee was getting on her nerves. He had never been in a plane before; everything enthralled him, from the split of Champagne they'd been served before takeoff to the clunky phone built into his seat's console that she could tell he was itching to take apart. Lucy was relieved when the cabin lights were turned down and he fell asleep, snoring lightly.

Almost all the other passengers were asleep as well. Finishing her mini bottle of Walker Black, she shoved it into a little compartment where it clinked against the rest of her empties. Her head spun pleasantly and she was finally starting to relax.

There was just enough ambient light to appreciate the gorgeous brunette across the aisle from her. Late thirties, maybe early forties. Pale, creamy, virtually unlined skin. Outrageously long lashes that brushed prominent cheekbones. Sleek, thick, expensively cut hair the color of a really good mink. Dark gray cashmere V-neck sweater, sleeves casually pushed halfway to the elbows to reveal a heavy gold link bracelet adorning one slender wrist; a plain gold band encircled the ring finger. Long legs draped in fine charcoal wool slacks. Nicely shaped feet in dark sheer stockings, their black leather pumps having been stowed in the under-seat compartment in favor of the slippers from the airline's personal care kit shortly after dinner service.

Lucy willed the woman to awaken; she wanted to know what color the eyes were behind those amazing lashes. Unfortunately the passenger in the next seat -– a heavyset man with a brick-red face and a bad combover, presumably the brunette's companion -– seemed to respond instead. He lifted his head with a grunt, wiped something from his mouth, turned on his side toward the window and went back to sleep.

His movements roused the woman. At first sleepily muzzy, she blinked when she realized that Lucy was staring at her. Flushing, she looked away from Lucy's slow-curling smile. A few beats later, she turned back; this time she didn't drop her eyes.

_Bingo_, Lucy thought. Making an elaborate show of stretching, she languorously arched her body in the confines of the seat, then got up to stroll toward one of the forward lavs. The flight attendants were nowhere to be seen; they were probably all gossiping or napping in the aft galley.

Slipping into the dark cramped space, she shut the door but didn't flip the latch. _Give it five minutes_. Silently she began the countdown.

She'd reached T-minus two when the door eased open.

The woman smelled as good as she looked, a hint of warm spiciness arising from her skin, a faintly floral scent from her hair. Quickly Lucy pulled her inside, then slid the lock in place.

Even in sickly greenish-yellow fluorescent lighting, the brunette was stunning. Lucy smiled, letting her gaze roam up and down the long lithe body that was half a head taller than her own. The eyes were wide, slightly tip-tilted at the corners, with a hundred changeable shades of green and brown and even a flash of grey all ringed in dark olive. And that skin... her fingers brushed the warm satin of the cheek so lightly they trembled, following a line from one cheekbone down to the lips that parted as she traced the outline of the full mouth.

Lucy bent to press her lips to the fluttering pulse at the base of the slender throat, chuckling at the faint gasp when she flicked her tongue in the hollow. The woman shivered, breath quickening, but there was no trace of unease in those extraordinary eyes; the pupils dilated, nearly drowning the irises in bottomless black.

Guiding her gently so that she leaned against the flimsy door, Lucy captured the lovely mouth in an achingly sweet kiss...

Some hours later Lucy emerged from the lavatory, winking jauntily at a passing flight attendant who gave her a cynical smile in return.

Scud was awake, his laptop open on his tray table. He raised a brow as she settled into her seat. "Still peeling herself off the ceiling?"

Lucy smirked. "It's not like there's enough space in there for two people to use the sink at the same time. Besides, I was trying to be discreet."

"Oh, yeah. The thumping and moaning were really discreet. Did you even get her name?"

"No, but I do know she's religious."

"How do you know that?"

"Kept calling out to God."

Scud rolled his eyes and went back to playing Half-Life.

Lucy hit the call button to summon an attendant and asked for a glass of Shiraz. She let the softly acidic red play over her tongue, savoring the sweet berry and vanilla oak notes. _Definitely the right wine to go with hot brunette_.

When the woman finally returned to her seat, Lucy saluted her with the glass, just to see her blush and smile.

* * *

The view from their penthouse suite in the Quay Grand was spectacular. Lucy had opened all the windows in the lounge and her bedroom as soon as they'd checked in, enjoying the light late-spring breeze coming in off the Harbour and the sight of the boats gliding by the Opera House.

Scud joined her on the balcony, having already unpacked his few things in his room. "Here, this was sticking out of your jacket pocket."

He handed her a business card, its heavyweight cream stock pleasant to the touch. The front was engraved with a tastefully understated logo: _A. Galletti Contemporary Art Gallery_. There was a phone number and a Sydney address, and nothing written on either side.

However, it bore the faintest trace of a very recently familiar scent. Lucy laughed aloud at the unexpected pleasure.


	9. Out from Down Under: Chapter 9

_Hell_, Lucy thought, tapping her fingers on the gearshift, _is definitely other people_. Especially when those people were law-abiding citizens who kept to the speed limit, which Scud had warned her was strictly enforced. The Porsche was begging to be let loose -– the lightest tap of the accelerator made it leap forward with a snarl -– but she made herself rein it in.

The sun on her face, the wind swirling in her hair, the precise notchy feel of the shifter as she rowed quickly through the gears, the beautiful car's response to her hands and feet all conspired to make it impossible for her to sustain her irritation. She'd chosen a roundabout route to the art gallery, partly to get used to driving on the wrong side of the road, and partly because it was a gorgeous day and the 911 was just so damned _fun_.

_"You're coming up on a traffic camera,"_ said Scud's voice in her head, _"so keep your nose clean. Looks like you picked up a tail, too; he's been on you since you left the hotel."_

Lucy sneaked a look in the rearview mirror. "Which one, the gray Skyline?"

The bone-conducting microphone wedged between her back teeth was calibrated finely enough that she could hear the click of his fingers on the keyboard. _"Yep. Checking it out now."_ There was a pause, during which Scud was undoubtedly cracking the licensing centre's database. _"It's okay, one of ours. Registered to ANZIF."_

She relaxed minutely. Australia-New Zealand International Fiduciary was one of the family's many dummy corporations; this particular one fronted for a number of investment banks, specializing in creative accounting. Probably Gunther's idea to have someone local watching out for her. "Good, long as they can keep up."

More clicking. _"Don't think that'll be a problem,"_ Scud said dryly. _"That's an R-33 GT-R V-Spec. It's got a 2.6-liter overbored engine that'll develop 450 horses."_

Lucy did a few quick calculations in her head and whistled. "In other words, don't challenge him to drag-race."

_"You got it. Wave hello to the nice cop on your left."_

Obediently she slowed to 60 kph, patting the dashboard as the Porsche howled in protest and silently promising it a proper run along Highway 1 later on.

Scud directed her to the gallery, a two-story whitewashed brick structure on Jersey Road Woollahra. The building's façade was dominated by a single huge square window, in which hung a large piece consisting of intersecting circles and lines that shouted with color.

She pretended to examine it, out of habit scanning from behind her sunglasses for signs of security. In the corner of the window a tiny green light glowed, no doubt heralding a host of sound and vibration sensors spidered around its perimeter; the bullet-resistant glass looked to be at least an inch thick. Two cameras covered the entrance; there would be more in the alleyway next to the building and up on the roof.

Focusing her attention back on the painting, Lucy shrugged. She preferred the old masters and Impressionists; they were far easier to fence to private collectors, especially Europeans and Japanese, who tended to pay cash and not ask a lot of questions.

Entering the door to the left of the huge window, she found herself in a narrow, double-height space, with much of the illumination coming from a large skylight that ran nearly the length of the gallery. The white walls were hung with carefully spaced pieces by several different artists; the bloodwood floor provided a striking contrast to the lightness and airiness.

"How may I help you?"

Lucy spun on her heel. Scrutinizing her haughtily was an ascetically slim young woman dressed severely in black. Everything about her, from the perfect chignon to the pointed tips of her stiletto heels, radiated disdain.

Acutely conscious of her wind-tousled hair, the casualness of her tanktop and ancient faded jeans, Lucy felt herself stiffen. "Um. I'm looking for... ah... "

"Danaë, I need the specifications for the new installation -– oh!" The gorgeous brunette from the plane, simply dressed in a French-cuffed cream silk blouse tucked neatly into tailored black slacks, stood in the doorway of a small office, smiling warmly. Her voice was low and rich, with a cut-glass accent that sounded almost more British than Australian. "It's you. Hello."

Resisting the urge to shove her hands into her pockets, Lucy smiled tentatively in return. "Hi."

Danaë, probably miffed at losing her opportunity to sneer, retreated to a desk near the entrance. "Do come in," said the woman, motioning Lucy over to the office and shutting the door behind them. She indicated one of a pair of leather tub chairs, sitting next to Lucy rather than ensconcing herself behind the massive cluttered worktable. "I'm so glad you're here."

"You are?" Lucy blurted.

One perfectly shaped eyebrow arched elegantly. "We didn't exactly introduce ourselves before." She grasped Lucy's hand a fraction longer than necessary. "Adriana Galletti."

"Lucy Diamond. So... this is your gallery?"

Adriana smiled. "Yes. My husband and I started it, but it's been mine alone since he died."

_"The dude on the plane must've been her general manager, Simon Mathison,"_ said Scud helpfully. Quickly Lucy jabbed the tip of her tongue against the microphone, cutting off its connection. "I'm sorry," she said, flustered. "About your husband, I mean."

"Don't be." One corner of that delicious mouth tugged upward. "He was much older than I, and in very poor health. For the last few years I was more his caretaker than his wife." Adriana laughed at Lucy's expression. "You must be wondering if I make a habit of allowing beautiful young women to seduce me. If you must know, I've never done that before -– on a plane or otherwise, and certainly not with a stranger."

Lucy's throat felt strangely thickened. "So why did you?"

"I'm not entirely sure. Maybe it was because you looked at me as though I were the most desirable woman in the world, and that you knew exactly how to please me. I was immensely flattered and, frankly, curious. You didn't disappoint me."

"Um. I'm glad." _Oh, that's a brilliant line. Jesus, Diamond, what the hell is __**wrong**__ with you?_ She caught sight of a clock on the wall. "Have you had lunch yet?"

That smile again. "As a matter of fact, I'm famished."

* * *

"Are you sure I'm not underdressed?" Lucy hesitated at the entrance; the restaurant teemed with self-consciously glamorous people all jockeying to see and be seen.

Adriana chuckled. "Wait till the surfers show up," she said. "Then you'll see underdressed. Come on."

The maîitre d' greeted Adriana with warm familiarity. "Something by the window overlooking the pool, I think, Tim. Unless," she tilted her head at Lucy, "you'd rather sit outside?"

Lucy scanned the terrace; even at the top of a cliff, it felt too exposed, especially since she'd left her H&K in the car. "Inside is fine."

They were shown to a table with a jaw-dropping view encompassing a glitteringly blue sea pool, a slew of surfers battling the waves far below, and the whole brilliant curve of Bondi Beach. Campari and blood orange cocktails arrived with their menus. Skimming the listings, Lucy felt relieved that most of the items looked familiar - upscale and overpriced, but still recognizably Mediterranean.

Adriana left her menu untouched on the table. "The spinach salad and whatever Karen's got on special today," she said to the unobtrusively attentive waiter, then looked inquiringly at Lucy.

"I'll have the same." Settling back into the lime green and sky blue cushions piled on the banquette seat, Lucy sipped at her drink and contemplated her dining companion.

Sunlight streaming in through expansive glass imparted a nearly translucent glow to Adriana's skin; it also limned fine laugh lines at the corners of her eyes that made her reassuringly human, more real. The lines deepened into a smile as she graciously submitted to the scrutiny. "Do I pass muster?"

"Fuck, yes," said Lucy without thinking. Mentally she shook herself. "I'm sorry, you must think I'm such an idiot. I've barely said a word over two syllables."

Those remarkable eyes danced with amusement. "You've certainly said more than you did the last time we met."

Unable to help it, Lucy burst out laughing, Adriana's contralto joining in. Her peripheral vision caught heads turning to gawp at them but she didn't care. "You'd really never been with a woman before?"

Adriana shook her head, light glistening off the rich darkness of her hair. "Apparently I've been missing out. Not only did I thoroughly enjoy myself, I haven't been able to stop thinking about you for days."

"Come to any conclusions?" Absently Lucy rubbed one finger along the rim of her glass.

"I hadn't actually expected to see you again -– I gathered that you weren't exactly a novice at catch-and-release -– but I'd decided that if you did turn up," Adriana gave her a half-lidded smoky glance, "I wasn't going to squib out on the chance to have a proper go with you."

Lucy would say later that, even if you held a gun to her head, she couldn't recall a single thing she ate during that meal. She did remember, in vivid detail, the feel of Adriana's hand on her thigh as she flogged the Porsche through its paces back to the hotel.


	10. Out from Down Under: Chapter 10

A slight tremor rippled through the slender body draped over her. "Cold?" Lucy whispered. The breeze had picked up, the air cooling considerably once the sun had set.

"Ngh," mumbled Adriana into her shoulder. Nevertheless, Lucy reached for the covers and pulled them up, wrapping her arms more snugly around the other woman. Idly she let her fingers play over the delicate skin at the small of Adriana's back, investigating the base of the spine and the top of the crease between those lucious buttocks.

She was rewarded with an entirely different kind of shiver and a throaty chuckle. "Are you sure you're not trying to kill me?"

Lucy grinned. "If I were, I'd pick a different method. This one seems to be taking way too many attempts."

Adriana shifted her weight to her elbows and leaned in to kiss Lucy, her hair falling around them in a heavy silken curtain. Smiling, she caught Lucy's lower lip in careful teeth, tugging gently, then swept the tip of her tongue inside the full curve. "As a very wise person once said, no gal is ever quite as eager to as when she just has. I don't think I ever fully appreciated that before now."

"One of the great many advantages to sleeping with women," said Lucy, lightly scritching the tips of her blunt nails up and down the long planes of Adriana's back. "No off switch."

Arching and stretching, Adriana kissed her again. "And unlike most of the men I've slept with, you don't seem to have any trouble locating the on button."

"You mean this one here?" Lucy's questing fingers circled, teasing.

Gasping, hips fishtailing aside, Adriana burrowed into her neck laughing breathlessly. "I surrender!" Obligingly, Lucy stilled her fingers. "Good lord, what time is it?"

"Mm?" Lucy fumbled a stray pillow off the bedside clock. "Almost 11:00."

"Oh, bloody hell." Adriana rolled over and sat upright.

Even in the dimness her skin seemed to glow. Lucy savored the sight of her unstudied nakedness, the loose tumble of glorious hair, the beautiful full breasts. She reached over, settling a hand at Adriana's hip. "Late for a dinner date?"

Adriana lay her hand on top of Lucy's and squeezed lightly. "Nothing half so compelling. I've a major installation to set up and I'm nowhere near done with the preparatory work. I need to get stuck in because, believe me, nothing will drive you spare faster than having to bear the full brunt of Danaë's disapproval first thing in the morning."

Picturing the pinched expression, Lucy made a face. "She doesn't seem to think much of me."

"Oh, she's terribly up herself. But she's also a very efficient and meticulous assistant. Lets me skive off on the odd day so I can get thoroughly ravished by mysterious American girls."

"Considerate of her." Lucy rubbed her thumb along the back of Adriana's hand. "No regrets?"

Up went that damnably mobile brow. "That," Adriana said lightly, "sounds very like a dismissal." Gracefully getting out of bed, she bent to kiss Lucy. "But no, no regrets. Goodbye, Lucy Diamond."

* * *

Jetlag had finally caught up with her, combining with the evening's full program of horizontal gymnastics to ensure that Lucy woke late the next morning. She lolled indulgently in rumpled sheets that still smelled delightfully of Adriana. Making herself get up, she tied her hair back into a ponytail, pulled on a sports bra and a pair of shorts, did a few cursory stretches and left the hotel at a light trot. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the gray Skyline peel off the curb and follow her within tracking distance.

Fully warmed up, she settled into an easy, fluid stride, delighting in the spring of her legs, the inexhaustible energy suffusing her body. Heading down Macquairie Street, she made a circuit around Hyde Park, then took side streets in a semi-random pattern that wound up at the pedestrian entrance of Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Stopping halfway across the span, Lucy leaned on the railing, ignoring the tourists bustling around her. It was an impossibly gorgeous day; a few puffy white clouds posed artfully in the sky, its clear blue reflected and deepened to sapphire in the water of the Harbour. The air was free of the haze that always plagued L. A., making everything stand out in razor-sharp detail. Powerboats churned by, throwing rooster tails in their wakes; sailboats glided in more stately fashion, tacking back and forth to catch the wind.

_I like it here. Now I just have to make this work. If I can._

Shaking herself out of her reverie before her limbs started to stiffen, she jogged back to the stairs at the southern end of the bridge, negotiated the crowds milling around The Rocks, then took a more direct route back to the hotel.

After a long shower, she ordered breakfast and sat in the suite's lounge, sipping her coffee. Relaxed and refreshed, her thoughts turned toward Adriana; an unconscious smile played over her lips.

Reaching for the phone, she nearly called the concierge to get a recommendation for a local florist but changed her mind. This was no bored housewife; flowers would be far too conventional and inadequate. Instead, after doing some research on Scud's computer, she left a message for Sigma, the operative who oversaw the family's interests in this sector.

Sigma replied within a quarter hour. _"It's not going to be cheap. Assuming you want to purchase it through actual legal channels, I mean." _He named a figure.

Lucy chewed at her lip, then shrugged. It was just money. "Get it. Messenger it to," she read out the address that Scud had unearthed, "as soon as you can."

_"No worries."_

Her senses went on alert at the knock on the door. The H&K's familiar bulk was tucked in the back of her waistband; instinctively checking to make sure it would draw with no obstruction, she peered through the peephole, which gave her a fisheye view of a hotel porter. She opened the door a crack. "Yes?"

"Delivery for Lucy Diamond." The young man held up a giftwrapped box.

It was heavy for its size. "Thanks."

"Oh, and this came with it." He handed her an envelope and left before she could tip him.

Sitting at the dining table, Lucy slid her thumbnail under the envelope's flap and pulled out a card with the initials AG engraved on the front. Adriana's handwriting was as elegant and composed as the woman herself. The message was brief: _Thank you for a memorable encounter -– on both occasions. Still no regrets. - A._

She set the card aside and contemplated the box. If Scud were here he would probably insist on scanning it first with his electronic sniffer, which detected everything from gelignite to radioactivity. Laughing to herself, she quickly tore off the wrapping paper.

Opening the outer box revealed a glossy black inner box with the Breitling logo in chrome adorning its domed top. Inside the heavy plastic clamshell was a small leather case. And inside the case was a marvel of precision engineering.

Lucy freed the watch from its padding, admiring the deep blue-black of its face. Adriana had had the titanium bracelet sized for her; it fit perfectly, the clasp snicking shut with a distinct click. The case nearly spanned her wrist and bristled with knobs and dials, yet for all its bulk the watch was incredibly light.

She was very glad she hadn't sent flowers.


	11. Out from Down Under: Chapter 11

"Are you out of your mind?"

Scud's eyes nearly bugged out of his head. With the wind whipping through his already disorderly hair, he looked half demented, and Lucy told him so.

"You sent a $20,000 Picasso drawing to a woman you're probably never going to see again and you're questioning _my _sanity?"

Navigating around a dawdling fishing boat, Lucy cut a glance at him. "'Never' is a long time."

Finally clearing the Harbour, she gunned the throttle, sending the rented Bertram surging. It was perfectly serviceable but rather elderly; she made a mental note to ask Sigma about obtaining a larger, more powerful yacht.

As high up as they were on the flybridge, fine salt spray still showered them every time they crested a roller. Scud clung grimly to the arms of his chair. "Relax. This is supposed to be fun."

He swallowed hard, refusing to look away from the horizon. "Fun," he said, grinding his teeth, "doesn't usually involve my lunch making a reappearance. Which it will if you don't slow this thing down."

"Aim it over the side. And the motion would be a lot worse if we went slower. Besides, I don't want to be late."

"What the hell is Sigma going to do, fire you?"

Lucy rolled her eyes. "It's unprofessional. Especially since this is the first time I've met him face to face. If this all rolls out like we planned, we're going to be working closely with this guy for the next few years. Not a good idea to make a bad first impression."

"Well, so far he knows that you have expensive habits and no impulse control."

In response she opened the throttle wide. The boat's massive twin diesels roared, the speed smoothing out the choppiness of the waves and making her laugh with sheer joy.

"Oh, God." The bones of Scud's hands stood out whitely against his skin. "Just drop me over the side. I'll take a cab back to the hotel."

"I thought you said you couldn't swim."

"I can't. I'll just hang onto a couple of life vests and paddle ashore."

"Easy pickings for the sharks."

His eyes rounded. "Sharks?" He pried his fingers free just long enough to pull the strap tighter on his seat belt.

* * *

"Crikey, you look just like your mum."

The strong antipodal accent came as no surprise; Lucy had spoken with Sigma on the phone a number of times, after all. What did surprise her was that one of the most powerful men in the syndicate was shorter than she and resembled nothing so much as an earnest, balding woodchuck.

But while the pear-shaped body might be soft, the intellect glinting from shrewdly appraising eyes was most decidedly not. "Sorry, you must be fed up to the back teeth hearing that. Good to meet you." More agile than he appeared, Sigma ("Call me Ted") ran the stern line from the dock to the transom cleats while Lucy ran springlines fore and aft and the bowline forward. He helped her drop fenders over the side, then nimbly climbed the dock ladder ahead of her, reaching down to give the still unsteady Scud a hand up.

Her father, she knew, had met Ted Shepard at Princeton; they'd belonged to the same eating club from which he'd drawn the nucleus of the group that would eventually take over and expand the family organization. She hadn't realized that Sigma had known her mother, though.

As they walked toward the largest of her warehouses, Lucy tamped down the urge to ask questions. She was aware that Sigma was still reserving judgment on her. Not that she wouldn't do the same in his position. That she was his best friend's daughter had little bearing on her capabilities; as far as he was concerned, she was still largely an unknown factor. Pumping him for details on her mother, of whom she had only a few photographs and a handful of fuzzy memories, was not likely to increase his confidence.

Unlike most of the other operatives, Sigma reported only to her father; otherwise he had a virtually free hand in running the family's interests in the South Pacific. To Lucy, this spoke volumes about his competence and her father's faith in the man. Some of the others -– like Zeta in Eastern Europe -– seemed unwilling to wipe their own asses without permission and double confirmation.

They waited as a forklift bearing a crate passed by, heading toward one of the corrugated metal two-TEU containers waiting near the loading dock. "Oi, Curly," called the driver. "That the cheese and kisses? Didn't know you were married."

"Belt up, Mase," said Sigma mildly. "That's the boss."

Lucy glanced over at him and did a double take. The air of arrogant confidence had disappeared; he seemed to have visibly shrunk, looking meek and apologetic, eyes rabbity behind his round glasses.

Mase doffed an imaginary cap. "Fair crack of the whip, miss. We all thought you'd turn out to be some Lady Muck. Mase McConnell." He offered his hand, which engulfed hers.

"Lucy Diamond. Nice to meet you." Mase drove off, adroitly depositing the crate onto a loading belt and spinning the forklift around to head back to the warehouse.

"Sorry about that," said Sigma. "Australian sense of humor can be a little abrasive."

She exchanged eyebrow shrugs with Scud, his face neutral. He'd recovered as soon as they were on solid ground, hanging back a couple of paces behind them. She shook her head in a barely perceptible movement; now was not the time to mention that she'd grown up surrounded by far rougher male specimens who made the genial Mase look like a Boy Scout. "Not a problem."

"By the way, as far as any of them knows, I'm your accountant."

"Makes sense."

Sigma smiled wryly. "You're about as chatty as your dad. How is the old bastard these days?"

They made small talk as Sigma got them signed in, giving her and Scud each an ID badge, and took them out into the main aisle of the warehouse. It was vast, with crates of all sizes stacked nearly to the roof and extending in each direction almost as far as they could see.

"We're never gonna find the Ark in here," muttered Scud, looking around in awe. Lucy kicked him in the shin.

Sigma pointed out the system of automated conveyers and retrieval machines. "Uses vertical space to maximum efficiency. More to the point," he dropped his voice to just within their hearing, "the crates are already marked cleared by Customs, with all the necessary paperwork, BIC codes and seals in place. Thanks to your laddie here, each one has an infinitely tuneable gamma ray signature -– pass inspection at any port, no matter what the contents. Nice one, that," he said to Scud, who gave a noncommittal nod in response.

Winding through a smaller aisle, Sigma led them to a spartan office occupied mainly by a coffee ring-stained conference table, with a few computers running WMS along one side of the room. He shut the door and closed the blinds of the single window. Gesturing for Lucy to take a seat at the head of the table, he opened a safe (she automatically categorized it as a Class 350 with four-hour fire resistance and glass relockers) that was built into the reinforced concrete wall, brought out a strongbox and placed it in front of her.

It was smooth and nearly featureless save for a small square gray panel where a lock ordinarily would be. "Biometric?" Lucy asked, amused; this must be one of Scud's toys. Touching her index finger to the square triggered a series of beeps, then the box sighed open.

She whistled. There had to be over 10,000 carats' worth of top quality unprocessed Argyle diamond in there, ranging in color from deep pink to champagne to dazzling white.

Feeling like a pirate gloating over her booty, Lucy ran her fingers through the stones and plucked out a particularly large wedge-shaped white. She rarely wore jewelry, save for the earrings that had been her mother's favorites, but she did have a particular fondness for diamonds like this: not yet cut or polished, just acid-cleaned, revealing craggy facets and planes and occasional glimpses of the fire within.

"As you can see, the siphons are working perfectly," said Sigma. "That was a brilliant idea of yours, putting intermittent electronic blinders on all the mechanical sorters in Perth. We've been able to extract about 5 percent of the gem-quality stones completely undetected. I expect the yield should be close to 250,000 carats a year."

"And the industrial-quality stones?"

From the safe, Sigma removed a canvas bag full of pebble-sized rough diamonds. "These get cycled back into the system and sold to the same producers we've stolen them from. Help yourself," he added as Lucy scooped up a handful of the stones to examine them more closely. "Plenty where those came from -– they get shoveled out by the JCB-load. You've more than earned them."

She smiled slightly, running her thumb over the diamonds, then pocketing them along with the large white. "Might've been my idea, but Scud was the one who designed the program and built the prototypes."

Thin eyebrows arched over the round lenses of his glasses. "Good man to have. If you ever want to step up to the Test matches," he said to Scud, "you've got a job here."

Lucy schooled her face not to show her irritation. Scud gave the man his most unreadable stare. "No thanks. I'm happy where I am."

Sigma chuckled suggestively. "I'll bet you are. Not that I blame you."

They wrapped up business quickly -– Sigma evidently having felt he'd gotten her measure and not found her wanting -– and headed back to the dock slip. The current was pushing the boat against its fenders, so Lucy left the after bow spring line in place as she pivoted the stern free. Sigma cast off the line and watched as she reversed slowly, then shifted into forward and idled away until they were clear. She returned his wave and maneuvered through the harbor.

Scud started to say something but she shook her head minutely; shore breezes could carry sound in unpredictable directions and for startling distances. Lucy rounded La Perouse and took them nearly to Little Bay before she throttled down.

She and Scud regarded each other for a long moment and said, simultaneously, "I don't trust him."


	12. Out from Down Under: Chapter 12

When they got back to their suite, the message indicator on the phone was blinking. "Booty call," said Scud, ducking into his room with his computer before Lucy could throw the contents of the fruit basket at him.

_He's probably right._ She picked up the receiver to retrieve the message. _No one else would have called the hotel._

Adriana's velvet-and-honey voice burred into her ear. _"You certainly are a woman of many surprises. I'd love for you to join me for dinner at 7:00 tonight. I won't ask how you found my home address, as it's unlisted, but under the circumstances I think I'll forgive you. Presumably you won't need directions. Don't be late."_

Lucy replayed the message a couple more times, smiling, before she deleted it. She checked her new watch. 11:00 pm in LA. Not too late to call her father, but what she wanted to talk to him about was too sensitive even for her cellphone; it could wait until she got back home.

She did call Gunther, though, confirming that neither he nor her father had arranged the escort that had been tailing her.

So Sigma was monitoring her movements. She filed that bit of information away for further review.

Crap. What the hell was she going to wear tonight? She hadn't the faintest idea where to shop in this city.

The thought of asking Sigma about it made her giggle. Still snickering, she called down to the concierge and explained her situation. The concierge, completely unfazed, asked for sizes and ranges of styles and colors, and assured her that a selection would be brought to the suite within the hour.

He was better than his word: a rack full of clothes was waiting in her bedroom by the time she got out of the shower. Lucy made a mental note of his name; someone that efficient might be worth hiring.

Trying on the garments was an exercise in frustration. Most of them fit well and would ordinarily have been fine, but she was looking for something... special. Finally she pulled out the last item on the rack, the one she was least sure about.

"Hey, Scud," she called. "Come here and tell me what you think."

"Think about what?" he said as he stuck his head in the door. "Guh."

She turned to face him.

Scud appeared to have been nailed in place. His mouth opened and closed, gawping like a landed fish.

Lucy couldn't help preening with satisfaction. "Thanks."

* * *

Driving in heels was out of the question -– the Porsche's clutch effort would have snapped her left shoe in half -– so Scud offered to drop her off. _Might not have been the smartest decision,_ Lucy thought, her hand cramping around the passenger-door grip. Scud's eyes kept drifting over to her, his reflexes just quick enough to keep them from crashing.

The only good thing about visions of impending death was that they mostly kept her from fretting about her date. Mostly.

"Do you think she'll think I'm presumptuous? Like I'm expecting to spend the night?"

"Are you kidding? If she wasn't gay before, seeing you in that dress would push her over the edge."

"It doesn't work like that," she said, rolling her eyes. "She's straight, she just happens to be open-minded."

"Yeah, well, she hasn't seen you in that -– "

"Mailbox!" Scud swerved barely in time. To her relief he turned his attention to the road rather than on her. Still, it was nice to have the validation.

He pulled up to a large, architecturally striking house at the very tip of Darling Point. "This is it."

Three stories of jutting angles and hard surfaces were saved from monochromatic severity by the warm glow of enormous rectangular windows, through which Lucy could see a number of paintings and sculptures. Multiple terraces wrapped around at various levels. The yard was landscaped into a series of small gardens, with tall palm trees standing sentry along the borders of the property.

"You're having dinner, not casing the joint, remember?" said Scud sardonically. She shot him a mock glare and remembered to swing her legs out before untucking herself from the seat. "Call me if you need a ride."

The front door opened. Adriana, her frame silhouetted against golden light, beckoned Lucy toward her.

Lucy grinned. "Don't think that'll be an issue. See you tomorrow."

"Have fun storming the castle."

She barely noticed as the Porsche roared off.


	13. Out from Down Under: Chapter 13

"You," said Adriana as Lucy sauntered up the wide stairs to the entryway, "look exquisite."

Taking her hand, Adriana slipped behind her and turned her to face their combined reflection in the huge mirror that dominated one wall of the high-ceilinged foyer.

Music played through hidden speakers. She didn't recognize the singer, whose low, supple voice glided over a hauntingly spare piano accompaniment, but the gently pulsing beat set her body swaying in a rhythm that Adriana's instantly matched.

The blood-red silk of the halter dress moved like water, its color lending an even warmer glow to the light caramel of her tan. It was, as the saying went, cut down to _here_ and slit up to _there_. Bias-cut flowing lines emphasized the lean expanse of her torso, making the most of her slight curves. In the heels, she and Adriana were nearly of a height, which she exploited by tilting her head back for a kiss.

"You're gorgeous," Lucy said against Adriana's lips, smiling, before her neck cramped, forcing her to break away. "But then you always are. I'm usually more the t-shirt-and-jeans type." With the fingertips of one hand she lightly stroked the arm snugged about her.

A warm puff of air tickled her ear. "That's part of your appeal, you know. But you do clean up beautifully. And you have excellent taste."

"Especially in women." Turning, Lucy draped her arms around the lovely neck and indulged herself in a lingering, increasingly heated kiss, breast pressing to breast, tongues slowly tangoing, lips swelling until she could feel Adriana's pulse against her own. Hands roamed over her back, which the wisp of a dress left completely bare.

"Flattery," Adriana breathed, "will get you everywhere."

The doorbell chimed.

Lucy felt her jaw set. "Expecting guests?"

Adriana placated her with a quick kiss before going to the door, opening it to reveal a young Asian man holding a large bag in one hand and a motorcycle helmet in the other. "I can't cook worth a damn," she said apologetically when she returned. "Hope you like Chinese takeaway."

"Love it," said Lucy, whooping with laughter. "I can't cook, either." Adriana draped an arm around her waist, guiding her deeper into the house.

* * *

They wound up in the kitchen, a huge space bright with maple cabinets and stainless steel commercial-grade appliances. "Really a shame," said Adriana, unpacking the bag and setting the cartons out on a large granite-topped island. "Anthony was rather optimistic, thinking that all this would inspire me. I can just about boil water without burning it, but otherwise I'm a no-hoper when it comes to cooking."

Lucy opened containers and sniffed eagerly. "Eddie always does the cooking in our house. He's pretty territorial -– no one's allowed in the kitchen while he's working. The one time I did try to reheat some pizza, I managed to set the oven on fire." At Adriana's inquiring glance, she grinned. "I didn't know you were supposed to take the pizza _out_ of the box."

Adriana laughed. She found the chopsticks and handed a pair to Lucy. From a separate compartment at the bottom of the bag, she pulled out bottles of Tsingtao, holding them up for Lucy's inspection.

"Perfect."

Adriana poured the beer into tall glasses and settled into the low-backed barstool next to her. Delving into a carton of char hor fun, Lucy picked out a fat prawn, enjoying its sweetness and the savory complexity of its light broth, then reached back in for a large chunk of tender chicken. Another carton contained plump steamed bao; she bit into one, the spiciness of char siu pork clearing her sinuses and making her eyes water. She gulped at her beer, welcoming the malty, hoppy bitterness.

Setting down her glass, she realized that Adriana was watching her. "What?" she said, suddenly self-conscious.

The full mouth curved in a captivating smile. "Just marvelling that all your appetites seem to be on the same scale." The smile widened. "Also wondering where you manage to put it. You'd have to run around in the rain to get wet."

_Not the only way_, Lucy thought impudently, chewing a mouthful of duck nian gao and admiring the way Adriana's sweater clung to every curve. The sense-memory of the soft cashmere brushing against her bare back made her shudder pleasantly.

Adriana gathered up a long stem of sautéed gai lan into a compact bundle and ate it, then asked casually, "Who's Eddie?"

Fuck! Not even half an hour in and already she'd slipped.

The number one rule of lying is to stick as close as you can to the truth whenever possible. Lucy swallowed and said, shrugging, "Sort of a distant cousin who's lived with the family for ages."

"Oh." Fortunately Adriana didn't press, obviating the need to evoke rule number two: keep it simple and don't embellish. "Is that the young man you're travelling with?"

"No, that's Scud. He's my friend." Which felt odd to say, but she realized it was true.

Lucy had long ago ceased considering him to be her father's employee. He knew her better than anyone else, put up with her temper and warped sense of humor but gave her back just as much shit as he got, could be counted on to point out strengths and weaknesses in her strategies and then find innovative ways to implement them, worked endless hours to invent and improve things he knew would surprise or delight her.

Actually, now that she thought about it, he was the only real friend she'd ever had.

Not that she could explain that to Adriana. "This is really good," she said, nabbing a cuttlefish tentacle and following it with a neat scoop of rice.

"There's a substantial Chinese and Malaysian population in Sydney," said Adriana after the briefest pause, evidently recognizing that Lucy didn't intend to elaborate on her relationship with Scud. "Also Thai, Vietnamese, Greek, Italian, you name it -– all blessings for the cooking-impaired. Here in Darlinghurst, there's literally hundreds of little restaurants and cafés just down the road." A perfect brow flickered. "Including the most fabulous place to have a late breakfast."

It was so easy to lose oneself in those eyes. Matching Adriana's brash grin, Lucy leaned in for a long, lazy kiss.


	14. Out from Down Under: Chapter 14

Cleanup went quickly, as they'd demolished the contents of most of the containers. Adriana binned the bottles for recycling and then took her hand. "Care for a tour?"

"Absolutely."

The kitchen opened onto a large entertainment area, where the flow led naturally to one of the terraces overlooking the bay. Throughout the house the walls and ceilings were all the same color, a soft off-white that let the artwork and furniture stand out prominently. It was very much like living in a museum, albeit an intimate one that encouraged touching and close inspection.

Next to a Barcelona sofa was a Noguchi sculpture that instantly made Lucy imagine what Adriana would look like draped naked over its undulating curves.

Misinterpreting her reactions, Adriana smiled wryly. "It's sort of an obsession. The gallery grew out of our private collection."

"Pretty impressive." Also, Lucy noted, much more desirable than the pieces for sale at the gallery, at least to her tastes.

"You haven't asked about my latest acquisition," teased Adriana. "You're either humoring me, or you have far more patience than I'd suspected."

Slipping her arms around Adriana's waist, Lucy brushed her lips lightly against the other woman's, nibbling gently along the perfectly sculpted jaw until she reached the soft spot beneath one ear. "None whatsoever," she murmured, taking in with her mouth the scent of the velvet skin, finding sensitive areas with her lips. "Not when I know what I want."

Adriana made a sound deep in her throat, leaning her head back to give Lucy better access to her neck. "I rather enjoy your direct approach."

Slipping her hands beneath the hem of the soft sweater to caress the even softer skin beneath it, Lucy smiled when Adriana moaned, muffling the sound with a kiss. Gracefully they moved in flawless synchrony with the music, the singer's sultry voice soaring over throbbing drums that roused the blood like a second heartbeat.

Panting lightly, Adriana laughed. "Want to come up and see my etchings?"

"Mmm?" Lucy was a little breathless herself; her pulse was racing, her skin aching to feel Adriana's against it, her sex swelling and heat-slick with desire.

Another kiss, the fleeting visit of a knowing tongue promising much more. "Never mind. Come with me."

Adriana led Lucy up a dramatic floating staircase whose treads consisted of thick blocks of teak supported on iron stringers, with curved bronze balusters designed to look like stylized tree branches.

The third floor was devoted to a large master suite. Lucy's eyes gravitated to the abstract reclining figure occupying a dramatically lit dais near the top of the stairs. "Henry Moore?"

Adriana hid her surprise well. "Yes, from his later period."

Lucy refrained from mentioning that she had stolen a similar piece from the Sculpture Garden at MoMA last year, at great trouble and expense. The helicopter very nearly hadn't made it...

Quickly she surveyed the surrounding space. There was artwork carefully placed all over the walls and in display niches, but no sign of her present.

"In here," Adriana said, palming a light switch and steering her forward.

Lucy stared. "You hung it in your _bathroom_?"

Sure fingers traced patterns over her back, electrifying her skin. Lips nibbled at the nape of her neck, warm breath barely disturbing the fine hairs there and leaving heated gooseflesh in its wake. "Know a better place to show off something you want to see first thing in the morning and last thing at night?"

She had to admit there was some logic to it.

The original frame and archival matting were contained within a lighted glass enclosure built into the wall over an enormous soaking tub sunk into a raised teak platform. There would be a hidden control panel, Lucy knew, with sensors that monitored temperature, pH and humidity within the enclosure, which was probably filled with argon or some other inert gas to prevent oxidation; the glass itself was conservation-quality, to filter out the UV rays coming through the skylight and wide windows.

Moving closer, she studied the sketch that until now she had seen only online. It was smaller than she had expected but still bristled with vigorous energy, drawn with a thick black marker on a Qantas Airways cocktail napkin and depicting a nude woman lounging over a pair of airline seats.

"I'm told the model was an air hostess who, ah, took care of Picasso on a flight from Barcelona," said Adriana, amusement crinkling her eyes. "He drew it for her as a gift."

Deft fingers released the clasp of the dress, which whispered to the marble tiles in a puddle of silk and left Lucy naked save for her shoes. Kneeling, Adriana unfastened thin straps and let her step out of each stiletto in turn, then rose to enfold her.

"Do you know how long I've been looking for just the right piece for this spot?" she said softly.

Lucy shivered, kissing Adriana. "I'm glad you like it," she said, her voice hoarse.

"No." Adriana's hands moved lower, cupping her buttocks and kneading gently. "I love it."

* * *

Lucy awoke with a suddenness that was startling in its clarity. It was nearly dawn; gray light crept through floor-to-ceiling windows and the open terrace door and dusted the outlines of the room. Cautiously she listened but could identify nothing that might have disturbed her. The gentle lap of the bay at high tide was soothing, with only the occasional far-off clang from a buoy or passing ship to punctuate its lulling murmur; even the gulls weren't about yet. The sleep-heavy limbs wrapped around her did not move, nor was there any change in the deep quiet breath that rhythmically caressed her skin.

That was it, that was what had woken her: the absolute rightness of Adriana's peaceful embrace.

Strange to think that, of the dozens of women she'd had sex with, this was the first one with whom she'd actually _slept_. Usually she was dressed and gone before the sweat had dried.

Adriana's face nestled in the curve of her neck. Not wanting to break the spell, Lucy contented herself with breathing in the scent of the silky hair.

She nearly drifted off, yet knew the instant Adriana was awake -– sensing not movement so much as the awareness suffusing the slender body melded to hers.

"Good morning." Eyes half-lidded but already sparkling, Adriana tilted her head up for a kiss.

Lucy smiled against the parting lips. "Morning." Lightly she stroked the curve of one hip, the long leg slung over hers, carelessly possessive in the night. The gentle motion escalated rapidly to more urgent need, and soon Adriana was gasping and writhing beneath her.

"Damn," she said, chest heaving, her glorious body lightly sheened, "I think I could get used to waking up like this."

Laughing, Lucy painted Adriana's mouth with the heavy wetness slicking her fingers, then kissed and licked until every trace was gone. Continuing downward, she paid homage to the lovely breasts, nuzzling the tender undercurves, lips, tongue and teeth bringing dusky nipples to hard pebbled attention, drawing a low moan as she suckled each in turn. She kicked off the duvet and kissed her way along the flat belly, darting her tongue into the navel to elicit a shrieking giggle, then settled herself between thighs that parted willingly for her.

Night-magnified scent made her mouth water. Hands wound into her hair and pulled her closer, silently but unmistakeably beseeching; only too glad to comply, she bent to her happy task.


	15. Out from Down Under: Chapter 15

It was very late indeed that Lucy and Adriana sat down to breakfast in a brightly lit cafe, eschewing the large communal table strewn with newspapers and magazines in favor of one of the smaller corner tables. Sunlight poured in through broad plate glass windows, making the polished wooden floor gleam. Vases overflowed with daffodils; on a counter sat a stack of cookbooks next to a footed glass bowl filled with brown eggs. Neat ranks of water bottles stood in niches in the plain white walls. A ten-foot chalkboard served as the cafe's menu.

Around them buzzed a happy mix of young mothers, surfer dudes, banker-on-holiday types, Japanese tourists, models, backpackers, little old ladies in tracksuits. Delicious smells emanated from the open kitchen; the food, from what she could see, looked simple but perfectly prepared.

A tall boyishly handsome young man in a white t-shirt, battered khakis and sandals bounded over and gave Adriana a kiss on the cheek. "Haven't seen you in ages."

"Hello, Bill. Sorry, I've been running flat out at the gallery. And I seem to be preoccupied lately," said Adriana, tilting her head toward Lucy.

He recovered quickly, taking in the two of them, their bodies so close they were touching from shoulder to hip. He couldn't know that Lucy was wearing borrowed clothes, of course, but if the look on her face was anything like the cat-in-cream smile on Adriana's, it wouldn't exactly take a genius to put two and two together.

The hickeys on her neck were a fairly good hint as well.

Bill grinned. "Good on you, luv. It's about time. Now," he rubbed his hands together, "let me see what I can come up with to feed you." Off he dashed to the kitchen.

Lucy watched him go, sucking down a mouthful of coffee; it was excellent, full-bodied without a trace of bitterness. "Are all Australians this laid back about sex?"

Adriana sipped her smoothie. "Do you mean in general, or me in particular?"

Lucy shrugged. "The latter, I guess. I mean, a lot of straight women have no problem going to bed with me, but most of them are at least a little weirded out afterward."

"I should imagine it takes them some time to regain consciousness," Adriana said wryly. One eyebrow hitched up into a circumflex. "May I ask what you consider 'a lot'?"

"No."

"Fair enough."

Bill bustled up to the table, setting down plates laden with quivering scrambled eggs, corn fritters with roasted tomatoes, spinach and bacon, hotcakes topped with melting golden butter, and thick slices of lightly toasted bread. "Enjoy, ladies."

The eggs were ethereally light and creamy and Lucy found herself forking them up far faster than etiquette decreed. "Oh, man, these are good."

Bemused, Adriana watched her while spreading something over a piece of the bread. "Here, try this."

Redolent of coconut, lightly sweet, with just the right tart bite from the lime marmalade, the bread was divine. "Holy shit." It was even better with a sprinkling of powdered sugar.

While Lucy inhaled the eggs and then the hotcakes, Adriana more demurely picked out choice bits from the plates. "To answer your question, I see no reason to be 'weirded out.' I'm old enough not to worry about what anyone thinks about me. I have no family to scandalize. And I'm a healthy woman who's been celibate for far too long. Why shouldn't I enjoy myself with someone who clearly relishes sex for its own sake, with no hangups and no guilt? Especially when that someone is the most beautiful girl in the room."

There might have been a slight increase in the murmuring hum of the crowd at the sight of the two women locked in a kiss, but neither of them paid the least bit of attention.


	16. Out from Down Under: Chapter 16

Scud, Lucy noted approvingly, had staked out a quiet corner in the Qantas lounge, away from the businessmen braying on their cellphones and the road warriors steadily applying themselves to getting drunk. There was enough space for them to talk quietly without being overheard, and he'd arranged the comfortably squashy armchairs so that they could survey the room without being obvious about it.

"That was quick," said Scud, not looking up from his laptop.

"She had to meet with the rest of the crew to get ready for the preflight check." His face was expressionless, a look she knew well. "What?"

He took a long moment to reply. "I thought you liked Adriana. I mean really liked her."

"I did. I do." Lucy tilted her head, regarding him. "She'll still be here when we come back in June."

"So you're going to tomcat around like business as usual and then expect her to welcome you with open arms?"

"I just met the woman, Scud. It's not like we exchanged vows or anything. No strings, no promises, that's how we left it."

"Whatever." He stabbed at some keys with unnecessary force.

She stared at him. "'Whatever'? Don't 'whatever' me. You got something to say, say it."

"Fine." Scud sat back, slumping into one corner of his chair. "Don't you ever get tired of needing a revolving door for your bedroom?"

"Not really. I like variety. And it's not like I'm ready to make a commitment." Lucy downed half her Jack and Coke. "For fuck's sake, how can I have a relationship when I'm not even who I'm supposed to be? Take Adriana. How fast do you think she'd back away if she knew I was responsible for most of the major art thefts in the past few years, never mind the rest?"

Scud made a face. "All right, you have a point. But as far as she's concerned you've got a clean past and an unlimited future. Why not build from there?"

"Look, for all I know she could be married by the time we get back down here. To a guy," Lucy added, making Scud laugh reluctantly. "If she's available, and willing, sure, I'll think about it. Okay?"

He shrugged. "Okay. It's just... well, you seemed happy with her."

"Leave it, Scud." Lucy swirled her glass, watching the ice cubes bump around as she brooded.

Because she _had _been happy, these past few weeks. Adriana was gorgeous, smart, unexpectedly funny, and classy in a way that somehow never made her feel gauche. And it didn't hurt that the woman had turned out to be nearly insatiable in bed.

Ah, well. Might be best to leave it this way, with only good memories and no chance of the inevitable disappointment.

"Any progress in getting the goods on Sigma?" she asked.

Scud took the change of subject in stride. "Not so far. Everything's ostensibly documented and above-board. Still got a few angles to work on."

Lucy nodded. The man was shrewd and had had years to entrench himself here; she hadn't expected it to be easy to penetrate his inner defenses. If there were any, that is. But her gut instinct told her that, deep down, something about Sigma stank.

"We need to find a place to live," Scud said idly. "He's going to be suspicious if we don't go through him, so we're going to have to assume that wherever we wind up it's going to be monitored."

She raised an eyebrow. "You telling me you can't find a way around it?"

"I didn't say that," he said, nettled.

"Knew I could count on you."

"Yeah, yeah."


	17. Out from Down Under: Chapter 17

Her application duly submitted to and accepted by the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Sydney, being back home felt almost anticlimactic. She'd also finally had an opportunity to speak with her father, who was home after nearly a month abroad.

"Not a chance. I've known Ted for ages. There's no way he's dirty." He tapped his fingers together. "Do you have any proof?"

"No," Lucy had to admit. _Not yet, anyway_. Scud was still looking for cracks in Sigma's walls but not having any luck.

And really, what was she basing her suspicions on? A smarmy attitude and a chameleonlike shift in behavior depending on whom he was talking to? That might make him an asshole, but not necessarily a corrupt one.

Still, she couldn't shake her impression that the guy was rotten. And it rankled that her concerns had been so summarily dismissed.

"I'll have to get back to you on that, Daddy."

"All right, Lucinda. But I think you'll be disappointed."

Disgruntled, she threw herself back into her old routine: working out with the guys in the morning, spending most afternoons with the girl of the moment, evenings at a club or at her bar.

In the meantime, Scud continued with his methodical probing. "Anything?" Lucy asked for the hundredth time, aware that he was doing everything he could but unable to keep from jogging his elbow.

"I'm not sure," said Scud, clicking through screens on the holoprojection. "There's something odd here, though. This," he pointed to a diagram of a bulk carrier, "is _Artemis_, one of our supramax ships. Goes from Port of Fremantle to Singapore and back." More data scrolled by, incomprehensibly fast, until he stopped it at the ship's manifest. "The bills of lading show that the holds are filled to capacity when she leaves Fremantle, but on her return runs, she's about 2 tonnes light."

"About 4400 pounds," Lucy said to herself.

"Not much when you're talking about a ship with a deadweight capacity of 58,000 metric tonnes. Pretty easy to hide something that doesn't mass much, or take up a whole lot of space."

"Which could be just about anything."

Scud ran a hand distractedly through his hair, rumpling it further. "Yeah. That's the problem."

Her heart beat faster as she concentrated on the numbers. He was onto something, she could feel it. "Is it always the same hold?"

"Good question." Scud entered a search string command. "Seems to be," he said at last. "But I'm damned if I know why. There's nothing special about it as far as I can see."

"Shit." The collimated information and the diagram remained unhelpfully impenetrable. "What if we approached this from the other direction?"

"Contact Epsilon in Malaysia, you mean?" Scud hesitated. "What if she's in league with Sigma?"

Lucy frowned. The syndicate did plenty of legitimate business in Singapore, primarily shipbuilding and repairs, and exporting petroleum products. Singapore had one of the strictest judicial systems in the world. Which was not to say that there was _no_ crime whatsoever, but if Sigma really were running goods through there, it would be a hell of a lot easier if he had help on the other end.

Scud was probably just being overly cautious. But the possibility of stumbling blind into Sigma's scheme could be disastrous.

"You're right. We keep this on the downlow for now." She left him to his computer and idly wandered around the room.

The worktable was covered with bits of projects in progress. Lucy had learned not to touch anything that wasn't a finished product -– Scud went into histrionics if she so much as breathed on some of the more delicate components.

"Since when do you wear glasses?"

"Since never." Scud looked up. "Those are for you, for when school starts. Infinitely adjustable magnification, and also a transmitting camera. Controls are built into that pen. Check it out."

Lucy slipped the glasses on and went into the bathroom to stare at herself in the mirror. "I look like a dork," she said, turning her head from side to side, scowling at the chunky plastic frames.

"Form follows function," Scud intoned sententiously. "We'll worry about what they look like when I'm sure they do what they're supposed to. All right, try out the remote."

Suppressing a sigh, she picked up the pen and clicked a small button on its clip. Suddenly her image in the mirror enlarged, so that she could count her lashes and trace a vein snaking across the white of one eye. "Whoa!"

"You can alter the degree of magnification by turning the barrel of the pen," Scud pointed out. Lucy did so a little too quickly and had to close her eyes to suppress a wave of queasiness. It took a few minutes' fiddling before she got the hang of the sensitive controls, but soon she found that she could read a newspaper across the room.

"Now try the camera. The shutter release is on the arm just behind the right lens."

With only a bit of fumbling she found it. Squeezing produced a tiny, nearly inaudible click. "How's that?" she called.

"Take a look for yourself." Scud turned around one of the monitors on his worktable. Filling the screen was a large image of part of her face, one nostril front and center.

"Not exactly Annie Leibovitz," she said wryly.

Scud grinned. "Just need practice."

"What I need," said Lucy, setting the glasses and pen back on the table, "is for them to look a little less Poindexter."

"Aw, come on. They could be like your Clark Kent disguise, only of course you're actually Lex Luthor."

She made a face at him. "You're not exactly making your case here."

Weeks passed. Scud sifted patiently through endless streams of data, refining his inventions in his spare time. He was in his element but Lucy was bored out of her mind.

Finally she couldn't take it any more. Planting her fists on Scud's desk and leaning into his face, she flashed him her best pirate's grin. "I'm tired of being good. Let's have some fun."


	18. Out from Down Under: Chapter 18

Lucy hadn't quite anticipated how different planning a major job could be, having Scud at her side. On the one hand, acquiring information was a breeze: there wasn't a database he couldn't crack, or a blueprint he couldn't dig out from even the most obscure, obsolete files.

On the other hand, the combination of his paranoia and thoroughness turned up myriad reasons any given approach might fail, so target selection became exponentially more difficult.

"There's a Van Gogh exhibit at LACMA," she said, scanning the Times listings of current events.

"Nuh unh. Couldn't sneak anything bigger than a gerbil in or out of there. And no, I'm not trying it," he added at her speculative glance.

"MoCA, Hockney retrospective?"

"That's photographs."

"So?"

"So the collectors want the swimming pool paintings and portraits. No one's going to pay for a bunch of Polaroid snapshots."

"I guess." Lucy gnawed at her lower lip. "Huh. This looks promising."

Scud scrutinized the article. "Jewelry exhibit at the Katinksi?" He quickly entered a few commands and immersed himself in the gallery's schematics.

"Some nice stuff here," Lucy murmured as she scrolled the holograph through a series of pictures from the exhibit's catalogue. The pieces appeared to be mainly 19th-century Russian, elaborately ornamental, heavy and rather ugly to her eyes; more importantly, many of them incorporated large stones that could be easily removed from their settings and recut.

Bringing up the gallery's floorplan, Scud overlaid it with an infrared image from a passing satellite's heat-detecting camera and a sewer and power grid map from the city's archives. In minutes, he was able to construct a virtual 3-D environment that could be examined from every possible perspective. "This is doable," he said, gnawing absently at his lower lip. "But we need eyes and ears."

"Get one of our guys working inside, you mean?"

Scud waggled a brow. "Way better than that."

* * *

A few days later Lucy stalked past the millimeter wave scanners posted just inside the heavy entrance doors of the Katinski Gallery. Oversized sunglasses, downturned mouth and upraised chin broadcast a haughty do-not-approach attitude that made the gallery's docent bristle. The security guards did not share the middle-aged woman's instant antipathy, though, and spent long moments admiring the sway of Lucy's rear end tightly encased in its scrap of a miniskirt.

None of them paid the least bit of attention to Scud, who wedged something into the dirt at the base of a large potted palm in the main exhibit area, then slouched unnoticed out the exit.

Lucy circled slowly around each display case, all the while reconnoitering. There was plenty of visible security, including cameras in every corner; from Scud's research, she knew there were infrared and ultraviolet sensors on the entrances and windows.

She took her time to lean over one or other of the hideously ornate pieces, watching out of the corners of her eyes as the guards nonchalantly left their posts to get a better view of her ass. _Wear a short enough skirt and the world's your gynecologist, _she thought sardonically. _Enjoy the show while you can, boys._

Casually she strolled to the restroom and locked herself into a stall. From her purse she pulled out what looked even on careful inspection exactly like a pack of Sobranie Black Russians. Shaking out the real cigarettes, she twisted an identical-looking decoy one near the corner. The pack sprang open, unfolding into a small but rigid platform as well as a support bracket that she hung over the coat hook on the stall door.

Working quickly, Lucy removed the false nails from the tips of her fingers. Beneath each shiny red talon snuggled a tiny component -– a sliver of microchip, a coil of hair-thin wire, a self-charging miniature battery, and so forth -– that she carefully prised free and set on the shelf in order. Assembly was a matter of fitting the little pieces together, literally a snap thanks to the ingenuity of Scud's design and the hours of practice she'd put in; in less than a minute, the transceiver was operational, its indicator light flashing once and then fading to the same nondescript gray as its casing.

Scud's voice sounded clearly in her head. _"Got the signal. We are go."_

"Awesome," she subvocalized, knowing the sensitive microphone would pick up her barely audible words. "Remind me to give you a raise."

_"I'm going to hold you to that. All right, remember not to swallow -– I'm not sure what that stuff would do to your insides."_

Lucy had already popped the erstwhile nails into her mouth, holding them for a few seconds to warm them up. She chewed carefully to avoid pulling the microphone loose from her teeth. The fake nails consolidated into a sticky wad of electroconductive polymer that she applied to the back of the transceiver.

"Uccchh!" She spat into the toilet and wiped her mouth. "Pretty nasty. OK, I'm on my way out."

By chance there was a security guard standing next to the water fountain she needed to get to, but he stepped gallantly aside at the incline of her head. Activating the push pad, she bent to touch her lips to the arcing stream of water. She straightened up, smiling over her sunglasses at the guard, who didn't notice her other hand unobtrusively fastening the transceiver to the fountain's side.

_"Perfect,"_ said Scud. _"Take your pics and meet me back at the house."_

Fine-tuning images with the controls built into the strap of her purse, Lucy made another slow circuit of the gallery, getting snapshots of the more noteworthy pieces as well as of the lock and alarm mechanisms on the cases. Scud would be busy tying the transceiver and the signal amplifier/modifier he'd hidden in the plant into the central security system; by that evening they'd be able not only to see exactly what the guards monitoring the system could see, they could also manipulate the output at will.

Now the only problem was getting into the place.

* * *

"OK. The gallery employs eleven guards, four per five-hour shift during the times when the exhibit's open, three roaming the building at night. The night guards monitor individual rooms according to a schedule. There's an electronic key-card system where each guard has to swipe his ID to prove he was at his scheduled station, but as you can see -– " Scud nimbly put up one grainy black and white image after another until the views from all the cameras were arrayed across the bottom of the holograph, " -– most of them check in, then go hang out in the break room or on the roof to smoke."

Lucy nodded, taking it all in. These guys were lazy and smug. Nothing made it easier for a thief than a target's overconfidence; the unmistakeable "what could possibly happen?" attittude told her that the place was ripe for a hit. Still, just the fact that all those bodies were around was going to make this one tough to crack. "Armed?"

"Just the night watch." He zoomed in on one guard's hip.

"S&W 1911 in a Galco 3-slot," Lucy said. "Good stopper, but that holster looks so stiff I'll bet it takes him two seconds to draw."

"I'd just as soon not test that theory. I'm highly allergic to having large holes shot in me, slowly or not."

A plan was coming together in her mind. "If we work this right, we won't be anywhere close enough to be targets. Skylight's out."

"Yep." The rootop cameras showed a couple of guards leaning over the railing, looking as though they had taken root there. "Windows are out, too -– those grates would take too long to burn through."

"And it's a freestanding building exposed to view on all sides: sightlines from the street, the condos out back and the restaurant in front, no cover or dead ground. Can't leave a getaway car in range, and anyone on foot is gonna stick out like a neon sign." She cocked an eyebrow. "Which means there's only one way in."

A beat as he worked out the possibilities. "Oh, no. No way."

Lucy laughed at the horrified expression on Scud's face. "Aw, come on, it's not that bad. You get used to the smell after a while."

"It's not the smell I mind," said Scud, grimacing. "Or at least it's not the only thing. I mean, you do know what's in a sewer, don't you?"

"Sure. Giant mutant rats."

"Giant -– "

"Breathe, Scud." Lucy waved a hand in front of his face until he blinked. "I'm just kidding. There aren't really giant mutant rats down there."

He slumped weakly. "Thank the gods."

"Because they all got eaten by the alligators."

Scud shuddered and glared. "You," he informed her loftily, "are an evil, evil person."

"You're just now realizing that?"


	19. Out from Down Under: Chapter 19

Weston, bored and sweating, sneaked a glance at his watch. _Jesus_, he thought, _AC goes out on the hottest day of the year and I get stuck keeping an eye on Gomer Fucking Pyle here._

Or more precisely, the back half of Gomer F. Pyle, as the service technician rooted around in the main compressor, seemingly unbothered by the brutal noon sun that beat down on them and made every surface shimmer with heat waves.

Glaring at Peña and Roberts, who were also on rooftop duty while the AC was being repaired but at least got to stand in the shade of the stairwell entrances, Weston adjusted his stance to shift his balls to a marginally less sweaty position.

He thought with smoldering resentment of the others downstairs. Goldberg had gotten the easy assignment, manning the front street entrance and monitoring the repair service vehicle for any unexpected activity. That wasn't exactly a surprise, though, since Goldberg was rumored to be the idiot nephew of one of the gallery owners. The other guards were stationed around the exhibit floor; a little warm, maybe, but not roasting their chestnuts like he was up here.

"Hey!" he said. There was no response from the repairman, so Weston nudged one protruding boot with the toe of his shoe. "Hey!" he repeated. "How long's this gonna take?"

The seat of the faded green pants shuffled backward. Sitting back on his heels, the repairman squinted up at him. "Not sure. Compressor seems to be fine."

"Fine? _Fine_? I don't call blowing air so hot you could make popcorn _fine_."

Gomer shrugged. "Haven't finished analyzing the whole system yet. I'm just saying that so far the compressor checks out." Unhurriedly, he crawled back into the guts of the opened unit, leaving Weston to stew.

In the sewer some seventy feet below, Lucy and Scud watched the security guard over a portable monitor. "Poor bastard. Almost feel sorry for him," she said.

Scud looked at her, incredulous. His tools, meticulously set out on the scaffolding they'd rigged, were already grimy from the indescribable filth that coated his gloves. He and Lucy, clad in black neoprene suits and tight skullcaps, were equally grimy. A greasy smudge decorated one of her cheekbones, and he could feel _some_thing on the back of his neck that made him want to claw at his skin.

He swallowed the bitter retort that was on the tip of his tongue and resumed cutting with the micro thermal lance; its tiny but intense flame sliced through metal and concrete with impressive ease. Lucy helped feed the lance with new magnesium-packed iron tubes, shutting off the oxygen as each was burnt out. Now and then she checked their progress on the monitor's ultrasonic setting, or kept an eye on the guards.

At one point she dropped the oxyacetylene torch that lit the lance. Scud winced at the clattering echo that resounded throughout the damp chamber but Lucy was unconcerned. "Aren't you afraid someone's going to hear?" he whispered fiercely.

Lucy shrugged. "Maybe, but the repair guys are making enough noise on their own and the security guys are busy watching them. Security always gets off on making sure that other people do their jobs properly. They're not going to be paying attention to anything else right now, not as long as your program keeps telling the AC to foul up in different ways."

"Don't worry about that -– it'll run on a variable loop for as long as we need it to. How're we looking?"

She switched back to ultrasound. "Almost through. There's just the subflooring to go, then we come up right underneath the main display case."

"Sure," said Scud with a gusting sigh. "Then all we have to do is cut four more gopher holes. Some glamorous job this is."

"Couldn't have done it without you," Lucy assured him. "Just think how much worse it might be."

He shut off the lance and shoved his protective goggles up on his forehead to stare balefully at her. "How could this possibly be worse?"

"You could be up on the roof, keeping watch over some old guy's butt crack."

"Think he'd mind trading with me?"

* * *

Once they'd cut into the display cases, the actual taking of the choice jewelry was easy as piss.

Snatching the pieces with a flexible grabber that he had made by adapting a plumbing snake, Scud passed them one by one to Lucy, who stowed them in her gear bag. "Amazing that they never bothered to put an alarm under the cases, or inside them."

"Nah," she said, inspecting a grotesquely large ruby in one of the necklaces. "They assume that there's no point in it because it would be impossible for anyone to get there in the first place. Is that the lot?"

"Yep."

"Call the boys. Let's move."

While Scud contacted Gunther to move in for site cleanup, he and Lucy gathered their equipment and dropped it into the rubber dinghy tethered below. Clambering aboard, they each picked up a small oar and started paddling through the sludge. A few thousand yards downstream, they reached a wide platform at a bend in the sewer and scrambled out, ridding themselves of their filthy gloves, caps and wetsuits.

Pulling a carboy of water out of the pile of gear they'd left earlier that day, they washed off the muck and changed thankfully into clean, dry clothes. A quick peek with Scud's monitor showing all clear, they ascended the service ladder and exited through the manhole cover onto a quiet side street off Rodeo Drive.

As planned, they split up, Scud slipping into a nearby Starbucks, Lucy ostensibly shopping.

She took a deep breath, enjoying the buzz of her adrenaline high. This was the best part of a job, the heightening of her senses -– even the sunlight looked brighter, everything sharper in outline. Feeling the heavy stones in her purse as she walked casually down the sidewalk gave her a rush almost as heady as sex, more addictive than any drug.

Outside Barakat, she eyed a colorful display of antique glass vases. Though outwardly she forced herself to appear calm, her brain fizzed along in high gear, critiquing the job. _What, if anything, had gone wrong? What evidence might they have left behind? How could they have worked it better?_

Turning every detail over, examining it inside and out, Lucy concluded that no, this was as close to a perfect theft as she'd ever pulled.

_Because of Scud_, she reminded herself. _Gotta think of some way to thank him. Between this and keeping tabs on Sigma, he's been working his bony little ass off_

Something tingled in the back of her mind. _Sigma... I'm missing something there... _She reached the shaded spot where she'd left the car and got in, firing up the engine and lowering the windows to let the warm late afternoon breeze wash over her.

_Scud's traced everything we run, from guns to booze to counterfeit currency, and every audit comes up balanced and accounted for. Sigma even recorded the stones I took from the warehouse. So if he's not skimming, what is he covering up?_

"Holy shit." She prodded the microphone firmly with her tongue -– it protruded just enough to feel like a sesame seed stuck between her molars -– and clicked her teeth twice to activate it.

Scud picked up his cell almost immediately. _"What? What is it?"_

Lucy could feel the gears whirring. "That Fremantle ship... does she go directly to the Port of Singapore?"

It took Scud a second to stand down from panic mode. _"Yeah, straight through."_

"Oh," she said, deflating. Slowly she nosed the big car out into the street.

_"But she does stop in at Tanjung Priok Sea Port, in Jakarta, on her way back,"_ he added.

Lucy slammed on the brakes, eliciting an irritated beep from the little convertible that had been waiting for her space. Waving at the driver in apology, she drove on. "And it's always on the return trip that the ship comes back light," she said, almost to herself. "Scud, has she ever put in for any special repairs or requests for equipment?"

_"Checking, hang on."_ She heard muted clicks and beeps; the portable monitor could hook into Scud's main computer back at the compound, but it was comparatively slow. _"Here we go. One storage hold had a small compartment with a cold water tap installed back in '96. And... yep, that's the the one that's consistently listed as empty or not filled to capacity on the bills of lading."_

"Son of a fucking bitch," she said under her breath. "Sigma's a goddamned human trafficker."

A long pause on the other end of the line. _"You could be right."_

"No. I know I am. The only things the syndicate doesn't touch, the only things he would have to hide, are drugs and prostitution. There'd be no need to adapt a hold for drugs, so it has to be human traffic. And Jakarta's a notorious gateway for abducted girls."

_"Damn."_ She heard Scud slurping, probably one of the disgustingly sweet frothy things he liked. _"How do we play it?"_

Easing a lane over, Lucy turned the corner. "I'm not sure yet. We don't make a move until we know how the racket works. Till then, we sit tight. See you back home."

She couldn't resist driving by the Katinski, which was cordoned off with crime scene tape and ringed by flashing blue lights. As she approached, she was stopped by a very attractive uniform. "Sorry, Ma'am, you've got to go around. This area's closed."

Lucy let her appreciative gaze slide down and up the young woman's figure, winding up at a blushing face and a lovely pair of wide brown eyes. Her badge read _L. Rodriguez_. "What's going on, Officer?"

"Can't tell you anything, Ma'am." The cop peered at the bulging Armani, Ralph Lauren and Dolce & Gabbana shopping bags in the back seat. "Move on, please."

Putting the car in gear, Lucy gave her a wicked smile. "Too bad. I was hoping you'd frisk me. Maybe do a full cavity search." As she turned the Caddy around in the narrow street, painstakingly avoiding clumps of policemen and a couple of plainclothes detectives who were questioning the hapless AC repair guys, she called out, "If you're not doing anything when you're off duty tonight, check out the Junk Pit. They do a mean burger."

The pretty cop frowned. "I've never even heard of the Junk Pit."

"Then you've been hanging out with the wrong people." Lucy winked and slowly drove away.


	20. Out from Down Under: Chapter 20

The "L" turned out to stand for "Lorna," and the uniform turned out to camouflage a lushly curved body. Lorna was an outstanding dancer and an enthusiastic bed partner but quickly became overly possessive. Lucy, who usually hated logistics, found herself looking forward to the massive preparations for the move to Sydney and without much regret parted ways with the demanding, jealous cop.

Sigma had found them a converted warehouse in a quiet area of Surry Hills, convenient to the E&B campus but away from most of the student activity. That it also happened to be within a few minutes' drive of Adriana's home had not escaped Lucy's notice.

First priority, once they had arrived, was to determine to what extent Sigma was keeping tabs on their activities. The loft had acres of space and any number of potential hiding places, but after an entire day's exhaustive search with Scud's most sensitive detectors, they came up empty.

After the umpteenth negative reading, Lucy shrugged and smiled lopsidedly. "You must've impressed the hell out of him. He knew you'd find and disable any bugs, so he didn't bother putting any in."

"Maybe," Scud said, disgruntled. "I'm still putting our security system on a heuristic variable-frequency closed circuit."

"Whatever you say, Mr. Spock. What about the outside cameras?"

"I'll install them as soon as I get all the windows fitted with vibration dampers." Little chance anyone could pick up sound through level 8 bullet-resistant glass, but Lucy figured that there was no harm in indulging Scud's whims. Peace of mind was a concept alien to him; she, on the other hand, could trust him absolutely in this and turn her attention to other pressing matters.

Such as what to do with the vast, empty interior, starting with her huge master suite and the oppressive looming of its whitewashed brick walls.

Lucy frowned, gnawing at her lower lip. This was the first time she'd ever set up base on her own, but having a horde of her father's men around didn't exactly fit the persona she'd worked so hard to establish. She had to admit that she hadn't the faintest idea of where to start.

_But I do know somebody who might._ She pulled out her phone.

* * *

"Let me get this straight," said Adriana, brows arching. "Not so much as a postcard, not an email, not even an obscene call for nearly six months. Then you turn up on my doorstep, asking for _decorating _advice?"

Lucy squirmed. Put like that, it did sound pretty lame. "Sorry," she mumbled. "Guess I wasn't really thinking." Shoving back her chair and wincing inwardly at its loud scrape against the floor, she started to stand.

"Oh, do sit down. It's your shout, by the way, so you might as well stay while I finish my lunch."

Sullenly, Lucy obeyed. Adriana ignored her fit of pique, cheerfully dispatching a large fillet of Barramundi while regaling her with the latest happenings at the gallery. She found herself responding reluctantly at first, then with increasing interest.

The surroundings certainly didn't hurt. Even with rain spattering the nearly floor-to-ceiling windows of the restaurant, the views of Circular Quay and the opera house were lustrously dramatic. Her companion, elegant as ever, was relaxed and utterly captivating.

And knee-meltingly hot.

Lucy lingered over every detail as they chatted. The haircut was new, short enough to highlight the splendid neck and cheekbones, its precision saved from severity by the charm of the schoolboy flop tumbling over one eye. It reminded her of that French actress she'd seen in some movie Eddie had raved about years ago. Adriana's face had a similar timeless architecture, though with far more warmth and animation. The white blouse was open at the collar, framing the pale hollow of the throat. She imagined her lips hovering there, pressing until she could feel the pulse thrumming through the tender luminous skin...

"Nice to know that some things never change, Lucy Diamond." Adriana sat back and leveled her gaze. "Or should I say, 'Reynolds'?"

Early in Lucy's karate training, her attention had once slipped while sparring with Gunther; despite his restraint, she had taken a sword hand strike to the solar plexus. Stunned, gasping without actually being able to breathe, she had briefly passed out.

Except for the fact that the face hovering in her wavering vision was Adriana's rather than Gunther's, this felt nearly the same.

Oxygen returning to her lungs, her mind raced furiously. Scud's construction of her identity was so thorough and so deeply layered, even she sometimes had trouble distinguishing between the old reality and the new. What could they possibly have missed?

"How -– " her voice didn't quite catch. She cleared her throat and tried again. "How did you find out?"

Adriana's wide hazel-green eyes sparked with amusement. "You're acquainted with a gentleman called Michael Connolly?"

It wasn't really a question. Lucy nodded, warily.

"On the wall next to my bed, there's a painting, a Braque. Did it look familiar?"

Biting the inside of her cheek, Lucy tried to recall the painting. Vaguely she remembered a lot of drab-colored blocks on a beige background. And then she remembered thinking that it had looked very like one of the items she had liberated from a private collection before they could be appraised for sale. "You're one of Mick's, um, clients?"

A wry smile played around the corners of Adriana's lips. "Let's just say that the gray market for significant artwork is a very small circle indeed. Not long after you'd gone back to the States, I told Mick I was interested in the other pieces from the same lot but he said that there might be some difficulty in obtaining them because the supplier had recently retired. It took a fair bit of persuasion but I finally squeezed a few details out of him -– such as the fact that his supplier was a young woman, the scion of a rather infamous family.

"After that, it was just a matter of asking the right questions of the right people. Or perhaps more accurately, the right wrong people." Adriana grinned suddenly. "Randa Arnstein sends her regards and says she's made a few new additions to her toy chest, should you decide to pay her a visit."

Much to her horror, Lucy found herself blushing. Fighting to keep her voice under control, she leaned in. "Have you told anyone?"

"Told anyone what? That a girl I met by chance on on a plane shagged me senseless for weeks, left me without so much as a backward glance and oh, by the way, she's a notorious art thief who's somehow convinced the world that she's gone legit? Oh, yes, I've been shouting it from the rooftops." Adriana took a sip of her wine and rolled it around her tongue. "Relax. I'm just rather narked that I didn't know before who you were. There's a de Kooning in San Francisco that I've had my eye on for ages."

The ringing in her ears was subsiding but her mouth was desert dry. Lucy drained her water glass, smiling mechanically at the waiter who materialized to refill it from a bottle of Evian. She waited for him to leave, listening to her heartbeat return to normal. "So, the stuff at the gallery?"

"Oh, I'm a good little swot when it comes to the gallery -– every piece there is thoroughly documented and comes with a COA. My personal collection, though... if something I want happens to be made available through not entirely aboveboard means, I'm not inclined to scruple about its provenance.

"Now." Adriana leaned back, regarding her appraisingly. "It seems you're an even more interesting young woman than I'd previously thought. If you're in no hurry, I'd like for you to take me to your evil lair so we can christen it properly. Afterward -– or in between, as long as you're focused on the during -– I want to get to know you. The real you."

All Lucy could do was nod.


	21. Out from Down Under: Chapter 21

To Lucy's surprise, Adriana took the decorating project directly in hand, even flying them down to Melbourne to spend a week burrowing through its antique markets and specialty shops. With brisk, incisive efficiency, she directed workmen, designers and contractors in a balletic whirlwind of activity that, in a surprisingly short time, created vibrant order out of chaos.

Wandering through the finished loft with Adriana at her side, Lucy marvelled at the just-right mix of vintage and contemporary furniture in the rich colors she favored. One-of-a-kind pieces commingled with cheap IKEA accessories. Hand-dyed fabrics added splashes of striking contrast to the yards of utilitarian canvas that served as dividers and backgrounds yet seemed to enhance rather than impede the natural light streaming through the windows and skylights. Wide planks of jarrah had been stained varying shades of softly glowing deep reddish brown and laid on the floor in patterns that subtly defined living spaces without interfering with the open flow.

Looking around, Lucy felt that Adriana had gotten her perfectly.

She pulled Adriana into a kiss. "Thank you. It's absolutely incredible."

Adriana smiled against her lips. "Nice to know my doctorate hasn't gone entirely to waste."

"Doctorate? As in PhD?"

"As in with a focus on Art History and Design. That and a couple of quid will get you a pint down the pub."

"So how come it's not 'Doctor' Galletti?" Lucy teased, letting her hands slip lower to fondle Adriana's buttocks.

"Because only prats insist on the title. I've also got an MA in Curatorship; perhaps I should make Danaë address me as 'Master.'" Adriana nibbled at her lower lip. "Want to give the new bed a go? They finally delivered it this morning."

"You're on." Lucy wrapped an arm around the taller woman's waist as they moved toward her suite. "It might be the only place in here that we haven't yet fucked."

"Why else do you think Scud agreed to the doors?" said Adriana as they passed his personal domain, which comprised a large wing that he had turned into a combination of office, entertainment center and bedroom. Wisely recognizing an immoveable object when she saw one, Adriana had made sure throughout the process of installing the imposing soundproofed sliding doors that his inner sanctum was never broached by any of the bustling horde. "Has he said anything about them?"

"Not in so many words, but the other day he programmed them to make that whooshing Star Trek sound when they open and close. I think it's pretty safe to say that he approves."

In her suite, Lucy tugged her t-shirt over her head, toed off her boots and skinned out of her jeans and underwear, kicking them haphazardly out of the way. Adriana laughed and followed suit, though rather more sedately, taking the time to drape her slacks and blouse over a chair before gathering Lucy into a deepening kiss. "I'm just glad you approve."

Lucy let her hands roam, indulging in the silky warmth of Adriana's skin, the play of muscle in the long back, the soft-firm rounds of her perfect ass. "I do. Thoroughly," Lucy said. "Matter of fact, I've been thinking of how I can repay you."

"Oh?" Adriana purred, hands luxuriating in the thickness of Lucy's hair. "Any hints?"

Softly she rippled her fingers along Adriana's spine, smiling as the long, lithe body undulated against hers. "Haven't you figured out by now that I'm all about the show rather than the tell?"

Adriana kissed her way down the line of Lucy's jaw. "So show me," she whispered against her ear.

"Bed," said Lucy a little hoarsely, her pulse racing. "Be right back."

Reluctantly she broke away, moving toward the ingenious arrangement of shelving and taut canvas that served as a walk-in closet. From a drawer in one of the cabinets, she drew out a black velvet pouch. Returning with it, she was struck by the enchanting tableau of the naked woman languidly sprawled against burgundy sateen sheets.

"Beautiful," she murmured.

Climbing into bed, she stretched out on her side, propping herself on one elbow so she could watch Adriana's reaction as she poured out the pouch's contents between them.

Five smoothly heavy oval midnight blue stones, each nearly the size of an egg, tumbled out. Adriana gasped, reaching out to pick one up with wondering fingers.

Under the glow of the bedside lamp, the stone's center burst into a flawless six-rayed star.

"They're fantastic," Adriana said as she examined each of them in turn. "I've never seen such perfect sapphires of this size. Where on earth did you find them?"

"Stole them from a spoiled-brat Arabian prince who wouldn't take no for an answer. Seduced a couple of his wives while I was at it."

"At the same time?"

"Well, sort of. Yasmin was first, then she wanted Nahid to, um, help."

"I take it they also helped you steal these?"

"Believe me, there are _no_ secrets in a household with that many women. The men only think they run things. Now," Lucy said, cradling one of the stones in her palm, "about your payment." She arched her brow invitingly.

Adriana blinked. "You can't possibly give those to me. My little project wouldn't amount to even a sliver of what they're worth."

"Nuh unh. Not going to _give_ them to you." Lucy gently urged Adriana onto her back and tucked a pillow under her hips. Kneeling between unresisting thighs, she slid the tip of the sapphire along the glistening folds, circling, stroking, teasing. She leaned over and whispered, "You're going to have to earn them."

Hips churning, breath and pulse quickening, Adriana's soft moan choked off into a squawk as Lucy slipped the heavy egg deep inside her.

"What -– ?" Eyes wide, Adriana stared in surprise.

"It's pretty simple. If you can hold them in while you come," Lucy grinned wickedly, "you can keep them." One by one she quickly slid the rest of the sapphires in, gently but firmly coaxing the last one until its end was just visible at the entrance of Adriana's sex.

Adriana's head fell back as she groaned, though her hips never stopped their slow grind.

Lucy chuckled to herself, sliding down to brace on her elbows and admiring the view. _So fucking beautiful_. She leaned in and with her tongue followed the same slippery paths she had just traced with the sapphire, filling her senses with the incomparably complex sweet salt musk tang.

Adriana cried out as her hips jerked, ejecting a sapphire.

"Tch," Lucy said in mock admonishment. "Elle m'aime un peu." Trapping Adriana's plumply scarlet little bundle between her upper lip and her relentlessly lashing tongue, she reveled in every shudder quaking her lover's body. Abruptly she broke her rhythm and ever so gently scraped with careful teeth.

"Oh, you bastarding -– "

"Beaucoup." Lucy watched the second sapphire roll around to click against the first. "Never said I was going to make this easy." Leisurely moving lower, the tip of her tongue circled tightly, prodding firmly against the satiny taint, Adriana's hips flexing with every subtle movement. Drinking in every moan, she felt the jolt through Adriana's body when she pressed the flat of her tongue against the pink rosebud.

The third sapphire bumped her on the nose as it joined the others. "Passionnément," said Lucy, lifting her head briefly as she made sure the stones didn't fall off the bed.

She soaked her hand in copious wetness, then slid her hand around, pressing the pad of one finger to the little pucker and patiently waiting until it relaxed enough to let her in. The muscular ring gripped her tightly, spasming as she slid back and forth in tiny firm strokes. Out popped the fourth stone. "À la folie," she murmured, her words muffled as her lips recaptured Adriana's rigidly pulsing clit.

"That is _not_ bloody fair!" Adriana hissed, hips writhing desperately now. Arching, her arms reached overhead to grasp the wrought iron headboard, practically grinding herself into Lucy's face.

The remaining sapphire was heavily palpable through the thin straining membrane; nestling it in the curve of her finger, she pressed upward and rocked it relentlessly, her mouth never letting up its voluptuous torture.

With a wordless shriek Adriana convulsed wildly. It took all of Lucy's strength to brace the jerking thighs apart, her mouth lips teeth tongue drawing out the clenching spasms and rolling them into new ever-crashing waves, over and over until at long last the exquisite body was still.

"Pas du tout," croaked Adriana, breath in ruins, involuntary shudders wracking her. Her hands blindly and feebly pushed Lucy's mouth away from suddenly too-sensitive flesh.

Smiling, Lucy carefully freed her hand and scooted upward, settling Adriana in her embrace and gently kissing her as the last of the aftershocks died away.

"Doing all right?" She brushed her lips over softly fluttering eyelashes, down the straight nose, along the elegant cheekbones.

Adriana made a small sound of pleasure. "Any more 'all right' and I'll just be a puddle. Nearly there as it is."

Lucy scooped up the four loose sapphires, holding them up to the light. "So, Ms. Dr. Master Galletti. Are you satisfied with payment for services rendered, or," she raised a brow as the marvelous eyes focused on hers, "would you like to try for double or nothing?"


	22. Out from Down Under: Chapter 22

Orientation was a maelstrom of activity. The immense E&B building seemed to be overrun by students, most of whom Lucy forgot immediately after meeting. Even so, she got the impression that they were vastly more educated and sophisticated than she could ever hope to be. For the first time in her life Lucy was deeply panicked at how out of her depth she truly was.

She had little time for speculation, however, because already the mid-year session was in full swing. There were an average of 18 hours of lectures, two problem sets, a class presentation, at least one recruiting presentation and several group meetings each week. The required reading list as well as the optional though "strongly recommended" material appalled her. How anyone managed to get through it all legitimately eluded her.

More and more every day, Lucy thanked whatever gods were listening that she had Scud. Lectures and other classwork were streamed directly to his computer station, and he soaked it all in with frightening speed. As the weeks passed, he scarcely needed to look up anything before firing information back to her through the microphone or into her laptop. Exams were a simple matter of letting him take over her computer by remote. Discussions and oral presentations were trickier but with practice they developed a nearly seamless technique that resembled simultaneous translation and required the barest modulation of her speech patterns.

Outside the classroom setting, insecurity made her deer-shy of contact. When she couldn't escape to the loft or to Adriana's, Lucy frequently ensconced herself in a quiet corner of the E&B common room. She became the object of more than a few speculative glances. As she always seemed to be absorbed in her studying, though, few of her classmates made overtures, at least not after having been rebuffed by a polite smile and a shake of her head. After a while, she had almost grown used to the unfamiliar feeling of blending into the background.

"Now this won't do. It's simply criminal "

Lucy looked up, startled, at a woman she'd seen before in some of her classes. She was tiny -– the top of her head would barely reach Lucy's chin -– but so perfect were her proportions and carriage and so intense was the energy that seemed to crackle around her that the small frame nonetheless gave the impression of height.

"Er." Lucy cleared her throat. "What is?"

"A stunner like you bogged down in her books. Wouldn't have figured you for a conch."

She examined the woman with interest. Hair so black it sheened blue fell in a tumble of waves past slim shoulders, framing an oval face with wide, dark eyes and caramel-colored skin. Her cobalt wraparound blouse and charcoal pencil skirt were off the rack but fit so beautifully they could have been tailored. The voice shimmered with an underlying musical quality that softened its markedly flattened Aussie vowels.

And there was no mistaking the fact that she was checking Lucy out with undisguised appreciation.

Lucy motioned for the woman to sit at the other side of the table. "You know, you're about the tenth person who's tried that line, or something like it."

"Oh? So how come they didn't rate?"

She gave the little spitfire a slantwise grin. "Wrong plumbing."

For a brief moment, they simply smiled at one another, but somehow the silence didn't feel awkward.

Finally Lucy said, "I'm Lucy Diamond."

"Sorry, where are my manners? Indra Mahdhavi." Indra held out her hand. Lucy shook it, registering its warmth and softness and only reluctantly letting it go.

"So you're at E&B too?"

Indra shook her head. "Reading for my MPhil in Civil Engineering. Part of my research involves doing a feasibility study for marketing the geotechnical modeling simulation I'm developing. And since what I know about business proposals amounts to the square root of fuck-all, my advisor strongly urged me to sit in on a few courses here with you lot."

Lucy laughed, unaware of the startled heads whipping around to goggle at their heretofore silent colleague. She noted idly that there were tiny flecks of gold in Indra's deep brown eyes, and that a tiny emerald piercing winked at the left side of the arching, slender nose.

Glancing at her watch, Indra made a sound of annoyance. "Damn! Got to run." Swiftly she rose from her seat, gathering her belongings. "Come over for dinner. Nothing fancy -– haven't a brass razoo -– but it'll give you a break from your books and we can have a good chat." She scribbled an address on the corner of a sheet of notebook paper and tore it off, handing the scrap to Lucy. "Half seven okay?"

Oddly pleased, Lucy nodded. "Sure."

"Don't dress," Indra added, then canted her head a little to one side, one corner of her mouth tilting upward. "Be a shame to cover that up."

Lucy blinked. "This?" she gestured at the gray sweater and black slacks that she'd purchased for their utter unexceptionability. "It's nothing special."

The lopsided smile widened brilliantly. "Wasn't talking about the outfit. See you later." With that, Indra turned and left.

Lucy stared down the corridor long after the small retreating figure had disappeared. Belatedly, she wondered if she should let Adriana know where she would be, then dismissed the thought. _It's just dinner._


	23. Out from Down Under: Chapter 23

"You're home early," said Scud from the depths of the sofa, not looking up from his computer.

Lucy slung her bag on the kitchen bar and dropped next to him, sinking into buttery leather and propping her boots up on the coffee table. "Adriana's working late, and Indra's studying for an exam, something about the fluid dynamics of tectonic plates. I saw her notes -– I'm pretty sure they were written in Martian. Figured it was as good a chance as any to get some down time." She noted the tightening of his mouth. "_What_, Scud?"

He cut her a glance. "I think you've redefined the phrase, 'burning the candle at both ends.'"

She rolled her eyes. "We've been through this. Indra's a nice bit on the side but there's nothing serious there."

"I'm sure she'd be thrilled to hear herself described that way. And Adriana?"

"Adriana's great, but..." Lucy blew out a puff of air. "I don't know, ever since she found out who I really am, it's like that's all she wants to talk about. Jobs I've pulled, people and places I've stolen from, close calls. Seems to turn her on."

"Sounds ideal. Even if you gloss over the nasty bits, you've got enough stories to keep her engine revving for months."

"Shut up." She halfheartedly threw a pillow at him, which he easily batted away.

"Does either of them even know you're seeing someone else?"

"Fuck you, Scud. Enough with the Spanish Inquisition. Anyway, I'm wiped. Think I'll take a nap before dinner." Lucy stretched, hitched herself to her feet and started to head to her suite.

"So I don't suppose you'd be interested in seeing this," said Scud a shade too diffidently, stopping her in her tracks.

"Seeing what?"

"Oh, just something I happened to catch on video."

Something in his voice made her scalp tingle, nerves on edge. Lucy waited as Scud launched the holographic projection. His fingers flew and the scrolling data feeds disappeared. The main central image widened, irising outward until it filled the entire plane of the display.

At first there wasn't much to see: a boxlike space with metal walls and floor punctuated by rows of exposed rivets; the room was nearly featureless save for four narrow rectangles on the floor and what looked like a portable chemical toilet in the far corner.

What the... ? Slowly she moved forward; this close, she had the disorienting feeling that she was actually _in_ the video footage.

Gradually it dawned on her. "Scud, how the hell did you get a camera on board the ship?"

Mollified, his voice warmed. "Microdrone in a duct near the ceiling. Built it to look like one of those giant Indonesian cockroaches. Audio feed in the mandibles, transmitter and receiver in the wings. He even makes little clicking noises when he walks, or really _scuttles_ would be a better word -– "

"Scud..."

" -– anyway, he's virtually indistinguishable from the thousands of cockroaches aboard the ship. If someone happens to step on him, his innards will squish realistically because the hydrostatic fluid in his joints looks just like -– "

"Scud!"

"Sorry," he said, not in the least repentant.

A door slid open, carving a trapezoid of light into the dim space. The audio quality was muffled but sufficient to be able to hear voices and occasional words in the background. Several people entered into view.

Two were male, dressed in the nondescript dark blue coveralls of the ship's personnel. They were not armed, but had no need to be: the four young women -– girls, really -– they herded into the space huddled in a trembling clump, hardly a threat.

Four pairs of widened eyes darted around the hold.

The oldest of the girls couldn't have been over 20. The youngest looked barely into her teens. Two of them were Asian, the others possibly Middle Eastern; they were clearly not related but panic had tautened their faces into identical expressions of fear.

As far as Lucy could tell, there were no signs of physical injury. Psychologically, though...

Scud switched to infrared when the hold's lights were extinguished and the door slammed shut. The girls clung to each other, talking too softly for the mic to pick up what they were saying, until one of the guards barked from the corridor for them to shut up.

Without speaking, they moved their thin pallets closer together and lay down. The smallest of the girls shivered under her blanket, sobbing. One of the older girls reached out an arm in the semblance of a reassuring hug, but the little one was inconsolable.

Lucy made herself watch the entire video feed. By the time the footage dissolved into static, her jaws were clenched so tightly her hair hurt.

_Fucking Sigma._

Wordlessly she spun on her heel and stalked toward the stairs.

"Where are you going?"

"I need to meditate."

* * *

Pushing open the heavy door of the airlock activated the lighting and ventilation systems of the firing range built into the basement of the loft. Infinitely customizable, it featured a number of Scud's innovations, including a backstop filled with a weirdly glowing blue gel that he claimed could handle anything up to a rocket-propelled grenade. Today, though, she had no need for any bells and whistles, setting it up with a plain shooting booth and a single lane.

Her collection of firearms took up half of one long wall. Lucy homed in on her S&W 60, taking it down from its mount and automatically checking to make sure it was unloaded. She looked for signs of corrosion but would have been astonished had she found any. Caring for her weapons was a lesson long ago drummed into her; the scent of Hoppe's no. 9 had been indelibly imprinted into her senses since childhood.

She thumbed in five rounds of .38 Special, delighting in the feel as the cylinder locked up with a solid snick. The Smith had been her first gun, not only because her hands had not yet been strong enough to rack the slide on a semiautomatic, but also because Gunther felt it was the best combination of reliability and stopping power in a size manageable for a six-year-old. She had complained at first -– even with a 2 1/8" barrel, the revolver was unapologetically heavy -– but quickly grew to love it.

Punching in a command on the control panel, the silhouette target glided along its steel I-beam to the requested distance of 5 yards. She put on her shooting glasses and slipped her ear plugs in place, shutting out the faint rumbling of the air cleaning vents.

The steady thump of her heartbeat calmed her, as did the reassuring wrap of her hands around the Smith's butt. Lucy deliberately slowed her breathing and let the target dissolve into a haze, focusing on the orange blade of the front ramp sight. Gently, almost dreamily, she nestled her finger on the trigger and stroked it through its perfectly polished and crisp pull, the sharp clean smell of gunpowder familiar and comforting.

Strong hand, weak hand, shooting from retention, point-shooting -– all the drills that had been hammered into her muscle memory. Fist-sized holes bloomed in the head and chest of the silhouette as she pumped round after round into the target, ejecting the spent cartridges with a sharp slap and smoothly refilling the cylinder from the bank of speedloaders stacked on the bench.

Finally reaching the last one, Lucy fired a controlled pair, then finished with a Mozambique for good measure.

"I'm pretty sure that piece of cardboard is never going to be a threat again." Scud leaned against the workbench, arms loosely crossed.

She removed the glasses and ear plugs, then retrieved the target and tossed it into the trash. "Just making sure. You can never be too careful."

Scud picked up the empty speedloaders that were scattered on the floor while Lucy raked the spent brass into a neat pile; the casings would be sent back to Gunther for reloading.

Quickly but thoroughly she cleaned and lubed the Smith. Returning it to its place on the wall, she felt clearheaded and serene.

"Feeling better?"

"Mostly."

Scud was instantly wary. "Meaning?"

"We have to shut that asshole down."

"Agreed."

"And the only way I can figure out how to do it is to blow my cover. In the biggest way possible."


	24. Out from Down Under: Chapter 24

The thing was enormous.

Built of scrap metal and copper tubing, it bristled with bolted-on bits here, parts of Scud's toys and other projects there. And -– Lucy leaned in for closer inspection -– was that _dryer ducting_?

She circled it, eyeing it skeptically. "It looks like... like..."

"Something out of 'Buck Rogers,' I know," said Scud, beaming. "It's a little crude, given the time constraints, but it'll do what it's supposed to do."

"Make us look like fanboy geeks?"

"Hey, I could've made it a plain metal tube, but you have to admit this has a hell of a lot more impact. So to speak."

"What does it do, exactly? Other than make us look like fanboy geeks?"

"What this is," he said, ignoring her jab, "is a Class 4 laser capable of putting out a 50 petawatt beam at peak power."

"So we're going to, what, threaten to write graffiti on the moon?"

"Not quite. We've already got exploration drilling going on here, here and here," he pointed at three sites on the holograph. "With the cores extracted, the diamond drills essentially become hollow tubes. Really, really long hollow tubes buried hundreds of meters into the ground."

Lucy narrowed her eyes at him. "And then?"

"And then," he tapped in a command that brought up an animated display, "we aim the laser through a nonlinear crystal and then through a splitting prism that effectively doubles its energy through second harmonic generation -– "

Scud did love going into lecture mode. "In English, please."

"The laser makes the drills vibrate like giant tuning forks, creating a kind of tectonic earthquake and resulting in a tsunami powerful enough to sink Australia."

"Shit." She contemplated the images of the computer simulation, which Scud left playing on repeat. "This could really work?"

"I think so. I'd need to run a bunch of calculations, but it's actually a pretty simple, elegant mechanism." Scud hesitated, and tilted his head. "I mean, theoretically. We're not _actually_ going to sink Australia, right?"

"Of course not. Everyone -– including Sigma -– just has to believe that we're capable of it, and willing to do it if we don't get what we want."

"Which is what?"

"I don't know, a lifetime supply of Girl Scout cookies? It doesn't matter, I'll come up with something. We need to get this up and running soon, though; the ship makes its next run in less than a month."

"How are you going to get the authorities involved? Without, you know, getting us put away?"

"I was thinking about tipping off those D.E.B.S. girls. If I'm going to be hounded by the feds, they might as well be hot ones, right? Fuck!"

"What?"

"Daddy. I can't believe I forgot. I need to let him know what we're planning. And why."

* * *

" ... they wind up in Jakarta, get transported to Fremantle and from there they get sent -– on _our_ ship, by _our_ people -– to Dubai, Russia, Turkey, wherever. Most of them don't even know what country they're in. A bunch of them were sold by their own family members to begin with so even if they could get away and get help, they can't go home again. It's fucking evil and I'm going to stop it if I have to strangle that bastard with my own hands."

Her father disliked hysterics, so Lucy tried to keep her voice and expression steadily cool despite the fury that tensed the muscles in her neck. So far he had listened with unblinking calm to the litany of evidence that she and Scud had uncovered or deduced.

She realized suddenly that she hadn't seen him in person in over six months, the longest period of time they'd ever been apart. Seeing his face magnified on one of Scud's huge high-definition monitors was unsettling, and she found herself scrutinizing him as though he were a stranger.

The heavy brows and thick backswept hair had more salt than pepper these days, which along with the bags under his deepset eyes made him look older than she remembered. Lucy was struck by how little of herself she could see in him. Her brother bore far more resemblance, a distorted and diminished yet recognizable carbon copy; she on the other hand seemed almost daily to grow more like the images of her mother in the fading photographs that she kept hidden in a drawer.

Rubbing his chin, his fingers rasping against the five-o'-clock shadow darkening his jaw, her father finally spoke. "You're sure you want to do this. Throw away over a year's worth of planning and preparation just to tilt at windmills."

Lucy blinked. What did windmills have to do with anything? "I'm more sure than I've ever been about anything in my life. Business school was never going to work out for me -– we would have been better off sending Scud."

"And what does Scud have to say about this? After all, Lucy Diamond was largely his creation."

Ice water trickled down her spine as she realized that she had taken for granted that Scud would go along with whatever she decided. He'd accepted her planned destruction of her Lucy Diamond persona with surprising equanimity; she hadn't given a millisecond of thought to how he would actually feel about it. She would have to make it up to him somehow. "We're on the same page," she said finally.

Was that a smile? The grey eyes were unreadable. "Then God help Ted. Because I won't."

Neither of them much for small talk, they ended their video transmission soon after. Slumping in the leather desk chair, she stared idly at the screensaver, an animation of tiny bouncing sheep that exploded randomly. _I don't know this man any more._


	25. Out from Down Under: Chapter 25

"So that is my request -– and quite a reasonable one, wouldn't you say? Surely the lives of 19 million people are worth a mere 50 million troy ounces of gold. That's 125,000 bullion bars, to be left on an unmanned vessel I will supply at the specified coordinates three miles off the northern coast of Nukuʻalofa, Tonga on New Year's Eve. Or Australia finds itself at the bottom of the ocean floor on New Year's Day."

The image of a beautiful dark-haired young woman with a knowing, enigmatic smile dissolved into a stylized diamond superimposed with the initials L D, then faded to black.

"Play it again," said Darcy, staring intently at the monitor.

Sam rolled her eyes but looped the video back to the beginning. Darcy was a pain in the ass know-it-all; she might be the captain of Alpha Squad, but Sam suspected she was spinning her wheels because she had no idea what to do in the face of their first actual major crisis.

She glanced over at the two newbies they'd been saddled with. Another of Ms. Petrie's brilliant ideas, the Big Sister program assigned each of the upperclassmen to mentor a member of the incoming class. So far she hadn't had much opportunity to form an opinion on hers; Recruit Trainee Bradshaw said little, just tended to huddle in a corner taking in everything with wide-eyed bewilderment. Hard to believe that she had received the highest possible score on the secret entrance test. They'd thought it was just a rumor, but Sam had confirmed it by breaking into the school's records database.

Darcy's Little Sister seemed more promising. Recruit Trainee Brewer was outgoing, abrasive and refused to be ignored. Word was that she had tested out of both Defensive Driving and the more advanced Agressive Driving and would be the TA of the Egregiously Offensive Driving course when she matriculated in the fall.

The video came to an end again. Darcy turned in her chair to face the rest of the squad. "Okay, everyone. Thoughts?"

"Could it be a hoax? Someone trying to take advantage of the end-of-the-millenium paranoia?" said Bettina, chewing at her nails, stopping guiltily at a pointed glance from Darcy.

"Possibly. This Lucy Diamond character managed to tap into the television broadcast satellites of every major country in the world simultaneously. Pretty elaborate for just a hoax. Sam?"

"Still working out how she managed that. No identifying marks on anything in the video and the signal itself is untraceably scrambled with the most sophisticated encryption tech I've ever seen. She could be literally anywhere."

"Can it really work? Could she really sink Australia?" Martine asked diffidently, blowing out a stream of smoke and tapping the ash from her cigarette into a potted plant, ignoring Sam's glare.

"The math checks out -– _if_ that laser is truly capable of what she claims," Sam shrugged. "If it is, it would be the most powerful one in existence by a factor of at least a thousand. So on the one hand, it seems like an impossibility, but on the other, we have to consider that she's somehow made the impossible happen."

"Okay, let's stick with what we know for now," said Darcy. "She claims to be part of the Reynolds Crime Syndicate, but none of the known operatives is named Diamond. She's also a lot younger than any of them."

Bettina looked up from her computer screen. "The amount she's demanding is pretty specific. 50 million troy ounces is the amount of gold produced in one year worldwide."

"Why Australia?"

Four heads swiveled around at the sound of the unfamiliar voice.

Recruit Trainee Bradshaw blinked at the sudden attention and swallowed hard.

"What do you mean?" said Sam, deliberately softening her tone. The girl looked as though she wished _she_ could sink to the bottom of the ocean.

She bit her lip. "I just meant, it seems like a random target. Almost too random. But in order to accomplish what she's threatening, she'd have to have a lot of infrastructure already in place, which means that this is territory she's familiar with. And logistically speaking, that laser has to be somewhere in the vicinity -– even as powerful as it's supposed to be, the limiting factor is the prism. So she has to be somewhere nearby."

Sam scowled, mostly because she was pissed that she hadn't figured that out as well. Her fingers flew over her keyboard. "Bingo. There's a Lucy Diamond enrolled in the Master of International Business program at the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Sydney. She's American, 24 years old, owns an import-export company and has a Sydney P. O. Box listed as her primary address." She entered multiple search strings and frowned as the results streamed in. "This is weird. Everything in her record is squeaky clean. Not even so much as a parking ticket. So what's the connection with the Reynolds family?"

"That's what we've got to figure out. But it's a lead," said Darcy, scribbling notes on a pad.

Recruit Trainee Brewer leaned forward intently. "So how do we take this bitch down? And when do I get a gun?"

Darcy raised a patronizing eyebrow. "_We_ will have to do a lot more research and wait for orders. _You_ two will finish out your senior year of high school and continue attending orientation sessions here on campus, _not_ in the line of fire. There's too much liability and we can't waste our resources babysitting -– "

"Attention, D. E. B. S.!" barked Mr. Phipps from their monitors as the general alarm sounded. "Convenience store hold-up in progress, potential hostage situation. Alpha and Gamma Squads, report to HQ ASAP!"

As the squad members scrambled for their weapons and communicators and prepared to leave, Sam stopped in front of her trembling charge. "Nice work, Amy. You've got good instincts."

The girl blinked rapidly again -– it seemed to be a nervous habit -– and then smiled, the previously rabbity face instantly transformed. _Well, what do you know, there's a real personality behind that impossibly naïve exterior. Maybe this mentoring thing won't be such a drag after all,_ thought Sam. Then her mind turned to the job at hand, everything else forgotten, as she followed her team out the door.


	26. Out from Down Under: Chapter 26

"This is like the coolest game of 'Battleship' ever," said Scud as they sat together watching real-time events playing out on a stylized map taking up most of the holographic display.

"Quit hogging the popcorn. Where is _Artemis_?"

He highlighted and labeled one of the blips, which was creeping down almost imperceptibly from the top of the screen. "Here's the drop point." A big X appeared at the center of the map, marking the floating dock they'd positioned at the designated coordinates. "It's crawling with surveillance. There are SDVs stationed here, here and here, FBI's hanging out in a plane and circling at 20,000 feet, Interpol's got helicopters ready to scramble from Atata Island, and the D. E. B. S. are aboard that dirigible, probably going to parachute in. And that's the transport barge with the gold, right on schedule."

"So _Artemis_ should intersect with the dock at just after midnight."

Scud outlined the carrier's route. "Yep. That's when things ought to get really interesting."

"You're sure this will work?"

"Considering that most of the variables are out of our control, no, I'm not at all sure."

"That's so comforting."

"Not part of my job description. Look, they're about to hook in." One of the monitors showed the feed from the aerial microdrone's infrared camera, which was capable of shooting in total darkness; the colors were somewhat flattened but the images were crystal clear. The barge rode low in the water, its displacement seemingly far out of proportion to the smallish crate it carried.

"Huh. So that's what $13 trillion looks like. For some reason I thought it'd make a more impressive pile."

Crewmen in bulky coveralls and helmets swarmed around, extending a ramp and securing the crate with massive chains to the dock's crane.

"What's with the ET suits?"

"Good question." Scud entered a flurry of commands. "Oh, very sneaky. The gold is irradiated with a unique isotope, presumably to make it easier to trace even if it's melted down."

"Maybe they're hoping it'll give us cancer before they can find us."

"Cute, right? Okay, commencing transfer. Come to papa." He tapped a key. Slowly at first but gradually gaining momentum, the crate slid along the ramp. The barge tilted alarmingly, sending its crew scrambling to lean against the opposite gunwale, but the dock remained stable as the crate was winched aboard. "Gotcha."

"Everything clear?"

"Checking." The drone flew around the dock, confirming that there were no stragglers or persisting connections. "All clear."

"Cool. Get ready."

"You got it." Resting his fingers on the comically large red button fastened to the edge of his desk, he leaned forward to peer at the monitor. "And the shit goes down in 3... 2... "

"What the hell are you playing at?"

Both of them jumped. _Fuck! We never deleted her door access codes._

Heart hammering, Lucy turned to face Adriana, forcing a smile. "Um. Hi."

" 'Um. Hi,' Adriana mimicked her overly bright tone. "So this is why you haven't returned my calls in weeks? And what the devil was that little stunt with the video broadcast? I sincerely hope that you've got a damned good explanation for all this."

"Luce..."

"I do but this really isn't a good time. Just give me a few more minutes and -– "

"Lucy." Scud's voice edged upward in pitch.

" -– I promise I'll tell you everything -– "

"Lucy! _Artemis_ is almost in position. If we wait much longer -– "

"Do it! Now!"

He slammed the button.

At first nothing seemed to happen. Then the monitors burst into painfully bright glaring nothingness, forcing them to look away.

Little whirly sparks obscured her vision for a few moments. When they subsided, she peered again at the screens, which were blank. "Did it work?"

"Hang on, the drone's camera burned out. Need to tap into the Feds' eyes." Rapidly Scud opened windows on the holograph. Grainy greenish images showed that half the dock was now missing, along with the crate. The barge's crew appeared to be stunned but unhurt, pointing and gesturing at the waterline.

"Got their attention, at least. Have they seen it yet?"

"Don't think so. Think we'll need to give them a little help."

_Artemis_' search lights lit up, conspicuously silhouetting the crane -– and the laser fastened to the very top of the crane's mast. As the huge carrier approached, equally conspicuous was the enormous prism mounted near her bow.

Scud slumped in his seat with relief. "That's done it. Here they come."

They watched in silence as the various authorities' vessels rapidly converged on the halted carrier's position, the D. E. B. S. rappelling down from the dirigible to board the ship. There was so much activity it was difficult to keep track of who was doing what and where; Lucy found it less confusing to watch the simple graphics on the main display.

"You wanted that ship stopped," Adriana said wonderingly. "Why?"

Lucy took a deep breath. Quickly she gave a précis of the background and their plan, watching the play of expressions over Adriana's face.

Adriana regarded her for a long moment, then smiled lopsidedly, extending a hand to cup her cheek. "You do realize that the law are going to think you're the one responsible for the trafficking."

"I know. As long as the operation gets shut down, I don't care who gets blamed."

"Noble but a little ingenuous. Have you thought through the implications beyond getting the girls rescued? You're about to become the most hunted person on the planet."

"Yeah. They'll be able to trace the carrier to my company pretty quickly, of course, but it's still going to take them a while to search her -– she's almost full to capacity and most of her cargo is legit. Plenty of time for us to close up base and get out of town."

Playing her thumb lightly over Lucy's lips, Adriana sighed. "Just out of curiosity, what happened to the gold?"

Lucy hitched an eyebrow at Scud; he swept a hand at her in a "go ahead" gesture. "Scud designed the dock to fold around whatever's sitting on it, then the whole thing submerges and propels itself to wherever we tell it to go. The surrounding membrane is impervious to water and essentially invisible to sonar and other scanners. It'll be there whenever we want to pick it up, maybe in a few years or so after the radiation has had time to decay. Watch, we'll do the same thing with the laser before those guys get any ideas. No flash-bang this time since we don't need the diversion any more."

Without warning the crane collapsed in on itself until it was almost flat. The remaining half of the dock performed its strangely graceful origami act around the laser and sank beneath the surface of the water with barely a trace. One of the SDVs took off in pursuit but soon pulled up, unable to follow with its instruments blind and no visuals possible in the pitch black sea.

"Neat trick." Resigned, Adriana pulled her close, kissing her softly. "I'm probably not going to see you again after this mess implodes, am I?"

Lucy laced her fingers into the silky thickness of the dark hair, deepening the kiss, then resting her forehead against Adriana's. "Probably not." She smiled up into those astonishing eyes. "In the meantime, you shouldn't be seen coming and going from this place."

Adriana smiled back. "Does this mean I'm being kidnapped?"

"Haven't you heard? I'm a highly dangerous individual."


	27. Out from Down Under: Chapter 27

"In other news, Adriana Galletti, art gallery owner and former lover of notorious master criminal Lucy Diamond of the Reynolds Crime Syndicate, was acquitted of all charges, including harboring a fugitive."

The camera cut from the Oceania News Network's lead anchor to a wide shot of Adriana exiting the courthouse accompanied by her barrister, a hulking man who loomed over her and made her look positively tiny; the supporting hand resting at the small of her back was the size of a country ham. He was built like the centre half-forward he'd been at university. By all accounts he had thoroughly earned the nickname Wrecker, and not just because his last name was Leahy. Only the bespoke suit and perfectly half-Windsor-knotted silk tie gave a clue that he was the best defence counsel in Sydney and not a Redfern bar brawler.

A chyron popped up next to the station's bug:**_ LUCY'S EX-GIRLFRIEND GETS OFF  
_**

As they'd agreed, Wrecker made no statement for the cameras. No sense dignifying the circus act the prosecution had perpetuated, trying to implicate Adriana on the flimsiest of trumped-up evidence.

"Next up: Steve Naylor interviews the woman who claims to have also been Lucy Diamond's girlfriend. As you'll see, this was not your standard love triangle."

A tall slim young man in a blue button-down stood mike in hand beside Indra, the E&B building in the background. Even before Indra had said a word, Lucy could see that she was vibrating with fury. The reporter had barely gotten Lucy's name out of his mouth before Indra exploded.

"Lucy Diamond? That b_***bleeeeeeep***_ f**_*bleeeeeep*_** c**_*bleeeeeep*_** stole my f**_*bleeeeeep* _**research and perverted it for her little scheme. If I ever get my hands on her I'll f**_*bleeeeeep*_**tear her head off and use the bloody f**_*bleeeeeep*_** stump as a f**_*bleeeeeep*_** ashtray -– "

Lucy hit the mute button. Soundlessly, Indra continued her invective, practically spitting at the reporter, who was leaning subtly away from her.

"Wow, she's really pissed off," said Scud, slightly awed.

"And you're surprised?"

"Maybe not. Would've thought there'd be some consolation for her in knowing that her concept was sound. All those guys in white coats who verified the data while they were hunting us down probably saved her ten years of field trials."

"She might not see it quite that way." Indra was now gesturing with vicious sweeps of her arms. "You know, she's even hotter when she's mad."

"Better not tell her that. Even if she were still talking to you."

The newsfeed switched to the latest results from the Australian Open. Lucy turned off the TV. Right on cue, her cellphone rang. She answered it without needing to check the caller ID. "Hi."

_"Hi yourself. Convincing enough? I was going for subdued but dignified with an undercurrent of bravely indignant."_

"Oscar caliber. You looked beautiful, even if your skirt was way too long. Covering up legs like yours should be illegal."

_"Incorrigible reprobate."_

"Just stating the facts, ma'am. How's Wrecker treating you?"

_"He's terrific. Wherever did you find him?"_

"He's the in-house counsel for some of our legit businesses. Don't worry, the connections are buried so deep even we don't know where they all are. But everyone says he's the best there is."

_"You should have seen the way he dismantled the Crown Prosecutor. Poor man probably felt as though he were trussed up with his trousers at his ankles. Almost felt sorry for him."_

"Yeah, well, then he shouldn't go around making false accusations against gorgeous women. Especially ones who're sleeping with me."

_"Flatterer. Did you really steal that girl's research?"_

"Scud might have taken a peek at her dissertation. That was what gave him the idea for the laser thing. I tried to apologize but she wasn't having any of it."

_"She seemed upset about a little more than just having her work ripped off."_

In her mind's eye she could see the wry curl of Adriana's mouth. "Jealous?"

_"No need. She's a stunning girl and you're hardly the settled, 2.5 kids and a dog type."_

Lucy tamped down the unexpected pang of regret. "That's me, Ms. Right Now."

_"Well, right now you're officially Ms. Public Enemy Number One, Lucy Diamond née Reynolds. Who finally made the connection?"_

"Nobody; Scud did too good of a job inventing me. He finally had to plant evidence in the DEBS' mainframe. The smart hot one, what's her name, Sam -– she was the one who eventually found it."

_"He's a remarkable lad. I'm glad you have him in your corner."_

"Me too."

_"So,"_ said Adriana a touch too casually, _"are you still planning on doing some deep-sea fishing?"_

Frowning, Lucy nudged Scud's ankle with the tip of her boot. "Yeah, I thought we'd try for sailfish in Guatemala." Scud raised an eyebrow and nodded at the codeword, typing furiously on his laptop. "Want to come along?"

The familiar chuckle burred in her ear. _"No thanks, I get seasick in small craft. You'll have to catch one for me. Besides, I'm having dinner with Wrecker this weekend."_

"Okay. Well, enjoy yourself. From what I hear, he's quite the ladies' man."

_"He'll have to work awfully hard to meet your standards."_

"If he's not taking care of you, I'll come back and kick his ass."

_"I'll make sure to pass that along. Goodbye, Lucy Diamond."_

"Bye."

Lucy slumped into her corner of the sofa. She told herself firmly that she was happy for Adriana. Remembering the veiled message, she looked over at Scud. "What'd you find?"

"She's got casual surveillance outside her place, cameras and the occasional drive-by, about what we expected. No permanent bugs but there's an intermittent tap on the line. The telltale lit up to warn her like it's supposed to."

Just then the phone rang. Lucy answered it, again without bothering to look at the caller ID. "Hey, babe. Miss me already?"

There was a faint hissing on the other end. _"Now, that's a much more cordial greeting than I was expecting."_

The voice was deep, gravelly with the residue of vile cigars and cheap whiskey, instantly grating. "Edward Schaffer. What an unpleasant surprise." How the hell had he gotten her private number? Scud instantly fielded her look and started typing again. Heart thumping, Lucy forced herself to stay calm. "What the fuck do you want?"

_"Just to congratulate you. That was a nice bit of work with the gold. Your old man wouldn't have had the imagination to pull off a job with that kind of finesse."_

"Thank you. What else do you want?"

_"Who says I want anything? Except maybe to give you a friendly reminder to stay out of my territory."_

"I wouldn't go near your territory even with a HazMat suit and a gas mask."

_"Sure, Miss High and Mighty, that's why you just got busted with a load of girls for sale. Don't matter to me if you want to get in on the skin trade, but just remember that I control the routes in Europe and the States. Long as you stay in your kiddie pool, you won't get eaten by the sharks."_ A click, then silence.

"What the hell is he talking about?" Lucy said, half to herself. "Unless..." She locked eyes with Scud, whose expression must have mirrored her own. "Unless Sigma didn't get shut down after all."

* * *

_5/28/14 To be continued, though I hope more frequently than every ten months... Thanks for hanging in with me. Feedback as always is greatly appreciated!_


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